Norwich Union’s online personal finance service, norwichunion.com, has awarded the fund administration of its new fund supermarket to Mellon Global Securities Services, the third-party administration and global custody arm of Mellon Financial Corporation. Mellon is providing full administration services to norwichunion.com’s fund supermarket ISA, which launched in December 2001.
norwichunion.com’s fund supermarket ISA offers approximately 70 funds from 13 of the top performing fund managers in the business. Mellon will provide the fund supermarket with straight through processing (STP), enabling norwichunion.com to benefit from lower processing costs and extensive volume capacity.
Richard Godfrey, Managing Director at Mellon, comments: “We’re delighted to be working with norwichunion.com. We broke new ground when we were the first to deliver an administration service for a fund supermarket in the UK and our work with norwichunion.com now cements our position as the market leader in this sector.”
“Norwich Union, as the UK’s number one insurer, is already a major force in the financial services industry, and we are keen to utilise technology advances to enhance our customer offerings,” adds Rob Davies, Brand Manager, norwichunion.com. “Our choice of administration partner is crucial to the achievement of this goal, and we selected Mellon on the basis of its proven track record, professionalism and ability in supporting a fund supermarket.”
The launch of norwichunion.com’s fund supermarket ISA follows research showing that fund supermarkets in Europe will account for up to 25 per cent of net new money coming into the European fund management industry by 2005. Research by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. last year claimed there would be 17 million online brokerage accounts in Europe by 2003, of which 1.8 million would be in the UK.
norwichunion.com recently received two prestigious awards at the 2001 Investor’s Week Online Finance Awards: “Innovation of the Year” and “Online Provider of the Year.”