BNY Mellon has completed the transition of DWS’s real estate fund accounting services worth $21 billion in assets onto its platform.
The go-live completes a three-year project of migrating DWS’s real estate portfolio, representing one of the industry’s largest fund conversions to a new platform.
“Transferring services such as fund accounting to specialist third party providers allows us to streamline our business and drive cost and efficiency benefits. We look forward to realising the advantages of our outsourced approach to our real estate fund accounting,” said Georg Allendorf, head of real estate, Europe at DWS.
The deal, which was signed in 2015, prompted the creation of a new Private Equity and Real Estate (PE&RE) fund services unit within BNY Mellon. The unit has now been renamed to Private Markets Solutions.
DWS transferred its real estate fund accounting, asset management accounting, and client and financial reporting functions to BNY Mellon, and moved 80 employees from DWS’s fund finance team to BNY Mellon.
“Through this transition, we took the opportunity to invest in platform enhancements from which all BNY Mellon customers and prospects can benefit. We now offer a single, scalable platform for property and investment accounting that is global but also tailored to the specific needs of pan-European real estate businesses,” said Alan Flanagan, global head of Private Markets Solutions, BNY Mellon.
“Investment managers are increasingly turning to asset servicers who are consistently making the necessary investment in both people and technology to deliver the highest service levels in a global product that also meets regional requirements and execution.”
A recent report by BNY Mellon suggested two-thirds of sovereign and public pension funds surveyed are planning to increase investments into real assets over the next two years, predicting around $334 billion to be invested into real estate globally.