BST Awards 2022: Best implementation at a buy-side firm—FIS

Overview

As the investment landscape continues to change, it is essential for buy-side firms to offer an outstanding customer experience to meet changing investor expectations and sustain growth. This can be challenging when relying on restricted legacy transfer agency (TA) software and outmoded service models that are at odds with evolving global and digital investor demands, and asset managers’ evolving goals.

What problem does it address?  

FIS Global Transfer Agency Services provides investment managers and fund administrators across multiple jurisdictions with a range of business process as-a-service (BPaaS) and software as-a-service (SaaS) solutions. As a global transfer agency services provider, FIS offers the scale and investment of one of the industry’s largest fintech providers, backed up by a large team of subject matter experts and modern technology.

Secret sauce 

Underpinning FIS’ TA offering is its service model, developed over its 30-year history. The firm is experienced in managing large-scale conversions, enabling its clients to meet their investors’ expectations. FIS enables access to worldwide coverage and processing capabilities via a multi-jurisdictional, multi-currency, multi-lingual solution.

Recent milestones

Pending approval from the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier, the Luxembourg Financial Supervisory Authority, FIS will complete the international phase of the Franklin Templeton transaction with the onboarding of close to 500 new colleagues from multiple global jurisdictions. This includes the business and technology resources responsible for completing one of the largest TA conversions in the industry. This involved the conversion of 30 years of transaction history, 67 million deal transactions, 162 million records, 2.4 million holdings, 1.3 million investors, and 1,140 funds and share classes brought live across 14 locations simultaneously.

Future objectives 

• Solidify the firm’s position as one of the industry’s premier TA service providers on the back the Franklin Templeton relationship
• Accelerate the deployment of technology with the goal of increasing customer satisfaction and reducing operational risks. Examples include building out the firm’s mobile and portal user interfaces, real-time processing and money movement capabilities.
• Increasing asset class coverage across the globe

Why they won 

This is the only category in the annual Buy-Side Technology Awards that focuses on the implementation of a technology or product at a buy-side firm. This is the second win in three years for FIS―its 2020 win came courtesy of the rollout of its Investment Operations Suite at a large, US-headquartered asset manager. This time it’s the implementation of its Global Transfer Agency Services at Franklin Templeton―announced just over a year ago―that gets the nod, which will see FIS taking care of all the complex and often laborious heavy lifting around Franklin Templeton’s transfer agency functions. It’s a massive undertaking, but who better to manage it than FIS?