Euroclear Sweden has launched its inaugural service to automate and standardize fund-transaction processing. Fund management firms, fund distributors and transfer agents in Sweden may now benefit from automated fund-transaction order routing between relevant parties and settlement of the cash-related part of the transaction on a straight-through processing basis at Euroclear Sweden.
Euroclear Swedens fund service will be extended to include automated fund-unit settlement and asset servicing by mid-2011. In subsequent phases, fund investors will also be able to hold their fund units in the same Euroclear Sweden account where they already hold their equity and fixed-income positions. Euroclear Sweden says it also aims to provide registry services for fund management companies.
The Swedish fund market, which includes over 1,300 funds with an estimated value of EUR 200 billion (SEK 1.9 trillion), is a sector where Euroclear Sweden can add value by reducing back-office processing costs and risks through automation and standardization, says Anders Lfgren, head of product management at Euroclear Sweden. The consolidated and comprehensive fund service that Euroclear Sweden will offer is filling a gap in transaction processing that should cut client processing costs, compared with conventional manual processing procedures. We also intend to leverage Euroclear Banks cross-border FundSettle service in providing Swedish firms with access to over 50,000 foreign funds and trading counterparties from over 30 markets via Euroclear Sweden.
A number of Euroclear Sweden clients, representing the fund management, transfer agent and fund distribution community, have signed up as pilot users. These include: Carnegie Fonder, Catella Fondfrvaltning, Nordnet AB, hman Fonder and hman Fondkommission.
We welcome and take an active part in the development of Euroclear Swedens fund services, says Bjrn Pettersson, head of administration at Carnegie Fonder. We believe the initiative will create more efficient, secure and standardized administration of the ultimately, the end investor.