Calastone Limited, the independent cross-border transaction network for the mutual funds industry, announced today that M&G Investments, one of the UK’s leading fund providers, has signed an agreement to make its funds available via the global Calastone transaction network.
M&G Investments will benefit from connectivity to Calastone’s rapidly expanding list of global fund distributors and aggregators through a single connection, reaping immediate advantages in cross-border trading access to distributors and aggregators in Luxembourg and Dublin. M&G Investments’ third party administrator, IFDS (International Financial Data Services) is connected to Calastone and, as a consequence, M&G can take advantage of STP efficiencies through automation of the entire mutual fund transaction lifecycle including settlement and business flow process automation.
By connecting to Calastone, providers are able to offer their open architecture funds to a wide variety of investors irrespective of domicile or preferred messaging protocol. Calastone enables providers to lower costs, gain visibility and keep control of their order flow, without any membership fees or technology expenditure. All Calastone participants enjoy straight through processing regardless of their size or technology capabilities and are able to track exceptions on a real-time basis, enabling them to react quickly and efficiently.
Commenting on the agreement, Kevin Lee, Managing Director of Calastone said, “We are delighted to see another fund provider benefiting from the Calastone mutual fund service. M&G will benefit by receiving orders electronically from a growing number of distributors and aggregators globally. It doesn’t matter whether those participants use ISO 15022 or ISO 20022, they can all transact via Calastone. Our full settlement service is changing the mutual funds landscape enabling all firms to benefit from STP. It is our ultimate aim to offer the entire mutual funds industry complete front to back STP regardless of participants’ incumbent technology or connectivity preference.”