IHS Markit is launching a new service aimed at reducing the 40-day average wait custodians and fund administrators face when opening new trading accounts with institutional investors.
The new Onboarding Accelerator will help firms to reduce the onboarding time to as little as one day, and is suitable for any servicer relationship an investment firm might have with banks, custodians, fund administrators, trade repositories, technology platforms, and other financial services providers.
Custodians have highlighted the need to have a single-client view and digitise the account opening process in order to improve the client experience and open up new revenue opportunities.
The technology from IHS Markit brings the historically manual, document-centric onboarding process, which often involves collecting information to satisfy know your customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML), credit, legal and tax requirements, into a highly customisable digital framework.
The new framework will allow service provider to define which documents and data they require for any type of account or client.
“Same-day onboarding is within reach for the industry. Onboarding Accelerator helps firms create a positive experience for clients from the very beginning by enabling an orderly process for setting up new accounts,” said Brittany Garland, director, IHS Markit.
New technologies such as blockchain and smart contracts have been touted as a potential solution for the lengthy onboarding process.
BNP Paribas Securities Services previously teamed up with fund manager AXA Investment Management to develop a ‘next generation’ fund distribution platform, with the aim to speed up the onboarding process for fund buyers and asset managers through the use of shared information.