National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia’s central securities depository, and ARQA Technologies have integrated NSD’s centralised system for record keeping of mutual fund units with QUIK software.
The new integrated mutual fund distribution platform allows investors to conduct transactions with mutual fund units on the primary market.
Currently, 20 market participants are connected to the mutual fund distribution platform.
The integration solution provides clients of brokers with an access to a collective investment market.
The solution can carry out transactions and unify interactions between brokers, asset management companies and specialised depositories/registrars.
The mutual fund distribution platform also provides higher reliability of transactions by reducing operational risks for all parties—contributing to the decrease of the workload on brokerage companies’ back offices through expedited processing of instructions.
Brokerage companies can use the service of centralised record keeping of mutual fund units and get an access to the full information of instruction statuses.
Denis Buryakov, managing director for depository operations at NSD, said: “NSD’s goal is to create universal conditions and infrastructure of remote sales. This requires the unification of formats and standards of data exchange and the better transparency with regard to information disclosure.”
He added: “Our joint solution will let all the participants conduct operations actively, and the collective investment market will find an additional instrument for investments.”
Vladimir Kurlyandchik, director for development at ARQA Technologies, said: “Integration implemented within the framework of the joint project allows professional participants to provide their clients with an access to a new class of instruments based on the standard servicing technologies. In particular, there is an option to buy mutual fund units via a unified broker account.”
Alexander Lesnov, director for development at KIT-Finance, commented: “We see the great interest of our clients in investing in mutual funds, so of course we expect that the joint project of NSD and ARQA will be successful, as it will facilitate the process of delivering a product from an asset management company to the end client.”
He added: “The new service provided via QUIK, the electronic trading system known to many investors, reduces the number of mandatory bilateral procedures for interacting with asset management companies and automatically performs all functions related to securities settlements.”
Sevinch Ipatova, deputy general director for operations, at Transfingroup, an asset management company, said: “One of the key advantages of this service is that it is an additional channel for remote sales of mutual fund units.”
She added: “Our clients with brokerage accounts now may use this unique and high-quality service when purchasing mutual fund units directly via the QUIK trading terminal.”
