State Street Corporation and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) announced that State Street completed the transfer and integration of Scottish Widows’ investment administration operations in the fourth quarter of 2001, including 816 funds comprising life and pension funds and unit trusts, representing 78 billion in assets under administration, and has implemented 104 more funds with the recent launch of SWIP’s open architecture product.
In October 2000, SWIP appointed State Street to provide custody, trustee and investment administration services for its entire range of life, pensions and investment products.
As part of the agreement, State Street integrated the investment administration functions of SWIP’s four component businesses – Lloyds TSB Life, Pensions and Investments (Andover), Scottish Widows (Edinburgh), Abbey Life (Bournemouth), and the former Hill Samuel Asset Management (London) — which together span over 27,000 holdings and 4,000 asset lines. The conversion began in the first quarter of 2001. State Street now generates over 500 unitized prices daily on behalf of the Scottish Widows funds.
“State Street’s swift and seamless integration of our four businesses’ investment administration functions has already produced significant strategic benefits,” said Bill Main, Chief Executive Officer of SWIP. “We’ve been able to move from a fixed based cost structure to a variable cost structure ahead of schedule, and are now able to focus our full resources on our core competencies of managing money and servicing our clients. State Street has clearly demonstrated their ability to manage the migration of a large and complex fund administration structure into their existing systems. We made the right choice in partnering with State Street on this critical outsourcing initiative, and, going forward, we will appreciate State Street’s ability to manage the upcoming significant industry initiatives, including T+1 and Eurofication of the GBP.”
Ronald E. Logue, president and chief operating officer of State Street Corporation said, “We believe our successful integration of such large and complex investment administration systems and operations as SWIP — and the speed with which it was accomplished — underscores the partnership we enjoy with SWIP and the benefits of State Street’s superior technology and expertise in serving as the world’s premier investment management service providers. With SWIP’s excellent back office capabilities now integrated, we are well positioned to meet the surging demand among investment managers across Europe for end-to-end investment administration services.”