Netik has announced a new fund of funds application for the alternative securities market. This comes about three months after Bank of New York invested a 51 per cent stake in the data warehousing group.
The application manages the flow of fund data across the entire spectrum of investment operations and supports the money management role as well as investor services roles such as fund administrators and prime brokers.
The fund of funds application uses of Netik’s information portal and data portal. The information portal allows users to manage content and to access their most current fund investment information over the web helping them to select and manage their portfolios. Information content includes fund facts sheets, performance summaries, manager reports and fund prospectuses.
The data portal then provides automates the process for submitting subscriptions, redemptions and transfers. These are uploaded to back-end systems both within and outside the enterprise.
“Netik’s fund of funds application has been designed for several of our customers who are leaders in the alternative investment space.” John Wise, Netik’s CEO says, “The primary goal was to enable investor services providers to enhance their value-added offerings to their customers and to automate, what is up until now, a very manual and complicated process.”
“If a fund manager makes an investment in underlying sub-funds,” says Wise, “they have to complete the subscription forms, send them to the administrators and then wire the money. The administrator then has to maintain on-going communication with the transfer agent. All of this includes multiple validation events for each transaction throughout its lifecycle in an extremely time-critical environment at month end.”
“For example,” Wise says, “Investors must have the correct subscription documents and money on the last business day of the month. If this process is missed, delayed, or bungled, the opportunity is gone, as many funds do not have subscription periods till the next month end.”
Netik’s fund of funds application facilitates the transaction processing. If a fund manager wants to make an investment in a new fund, but does not have the redemption money out of another fund, or if the subscription exceeds a deadline, an exception/email alert can be sent to the account manager, notifying them of this event. Exception processing workflow rules such as these are tailored for each client.
Netik’s fund of funds application has recently been launched and is live with one global fund administrator, according to Netik. In addition to transaction lifecycle management, the product allows users to create and maintain funds at the fund, class, sub-class, and series level, as well as contact details for all parties of interest.
This application also includes electronic document management for maintaining prospectus, dealing forms for subscriptions and redemptions, financial statements, and fact sheets.