Calastone, the global messaging and settlement transaction network for the mutual fund industry, announced that it has extended free access of its SWIFT Bureau services to the defined contribution pensions industry. The first two clients to sign up are Aon Hewitt and Baillie Gifford.
“We are very excited to have joined Calastone’s SWIFT Bureau service,” Philip Dickinson, Business Solutions Director at Aon Hewitt, said. “It was important to us that we found a SWIFT bureau which could deliver a cost-effective, transaction-based service to enable us to route orders to all our fund managers using the ViaNova message set.”
Connecting via the ViaNova message standard, the agreed industry standard for data exchange, participant firms will have access to Calastone’s full range of SWIFT Bureau services without maintaining their own SWIFT infrastructure or managing multiple bank relationships. Calastone will host participants’ BICs (Bank Identifier Codes) or allow participants to utilize Calastone’s own BIC.
“The transition to Calastone’s SWIFT Bureau service has been seamless and we look forward to achieving immediate operational and risk efficiencies,” said Keith Guthrie, Head of New Technologies at Baillie Gifford. “It is in everyone’s interest to welcome greater efficiencies in the defined contribution pensions industry. We are delighted that Calastone were able to bring us live with our institutional clients within one calendar month of opening negotiations.”
Edward Glyn, Director, Funds, EMEA at SWIFT said that “the number of corporate pension transactions is rising and this, coupled with the advent of new workplace pension solutions and wrap platforms, means that SWIFT is seeing a further wave of interest in the benefits of ISO 20022 ViaNova messaging. Clients are even more keen to achieve the choice, speed, value and transparency afforded by automation. We are therefore delighted that Calastone has extended its offering to allow pension fund managers and corporate pension administrators to seamlessly transact with one another over SWIFTNet.”
Kevin Lee, CEO at Calastone, added: “We have invested heavily in a SWIFT infrastructure and by opening up our SWIFT Bureau to the corporate pensions industry we are enabling them to access our ever-growing base of participants. The provision of direct access to our SWIFT bureau environment not only removes a link in the chain but also helps our customers reduce their costs. Calastone is continually looking for ways in which to make order-handling and post-trade services more efficient.”