Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) says Abbey – the former UK bank Abbey National, which recently rebranded itself as part of its efforts to escape its difficulties – has gone live with Infomediary, BBH’s outsourcing solution.
Abbey is using the messaging capabilities of Infomediary to collect trade instructions from its external sub-advisors and feed them directly into its own internal accounting system.
“We are excited that Abbey has chosen to use BBH Infomediary. The client reception to Infomediary’s innovative approach has been tremendous,” says Andrew Tucker, partner and head of Europe for BBH. “The Infomediary platform is a great example of bringing best-of-breed applications, SWIFT industry standards, and modular connectivity outsourcing together to create a flexible and cost effective solution to the challenges of data communications. This model is applicable to a large number of firms and we look forward to applying Infomediary with future clients who wish to selectively outsource different back-office functions in a manner that meets their individual needs.”
In a change to its investment strategy, Abbey recently introduced a multi-manager approach to its actively managed bond and equity-based Unit Linked Life & Pensions and Unit Trusts. As part of this new strategy, Abbey abandoned in-house fund management for the majority of the 29 billion portfolio. BBH Infomediary will be used to help with the communications dataflow.
“BBH Infomediary is an exciting platform that enabled a smooth transition to our new multi-manager approach,” says Gordon Wood, chief operating officer at Abbey National Asset Managers. “We are confident that Infomediary will allow us to communicate efficiently with our external managers while allowing us to remain in full control of our operations. We are impressed with both the capabilities of the platform and the professionalism of BBH and look forward to a successful relationship with the firm.”
BBH says that Infomediary differs from other outsourcing products in allowing fund managers, transfer agents, and others to selectively outsource certain functions as an alternative to the full back-office “lift-out” option.
This latest win for BBH follows the recent announcement that Infomediary had been recognised by SWIFT as a ‘Solutions Provider.’
BBH currently has 34 clients using the Infomediary platform, ten of which are European organisations.
BBH Infomediary, launched in 2001, is a hosted mapping, messaging, and connectivity platform.