Clarke & Tilley Data Services, a joint venture between DST International Ltd and State Street International Holdings Co that provides services to the unit trust market, has bought another joint venture, The Administration Partnership Ltd, and launched its new unit trust system, FAST 2000. The Administration Partnership is a joint venture between investment management companies Gartmore Plc and Henderson Administration Group Plc that offers administrative services for unit trusts and related products. Clarke & Tilley managing director Mike Winn said The acquisition of The Administration Partnership will give us our entry point to the third party administration business in the UK, allowing us to accelerate our plans to enter this market. The company will introduce its unit trust management system, FAST 2000 into the Administration Partnership’s existing five, as yet unnamed customers. The system has been designed in co-operation with what the company calls a ‘sponsor client’, investment house Save & Prosper Group Ltd, which has worked with the company to ensure the system provides the necessary user features. FAST 2000 covers all aspects of administration from deal execution to registration and dividend distribution.
It is a multi-currency application system covering unit trusts and mutual funds. The system incorporates DST’s Automated Work Distributor, an ‘intelligent work and business process management system’ that feeds the original data source, be that facsimile, forms, or electronic data, into the system, allocates the ensuing work to the next available resource in the appropriate department, and takes people step by step through the correct functional procedures. It can then automatically invoke application systems, in this case Fast 2000, on behalf of the user, and updates the status of the work. It will provide management reporting on work throughput and enables scanning and data retrieval. Save & Prosper said its existing systems run on an IBM Corp mainframe un der MVS, and it had been looking to update its unit trust management systems for some time. It already uses DST’s Automated Work Distributor, which it felt has improved its administration procedures, and said it made sense to move onto an administration system which integrated fully with the work flow product. The system will run on an IBM AS/400, with client-server architecture, and the company hopes to take delivery at the end of September. While Clarke & Tilley Data Services said it would provide its systems on a licence basis in-house, its main business thrust is to provide a full, facilities management service. With its acquisition of The Administration Partnership, it will now provide facilities management to both Gartner and Henderson. DST and State Street have operated a joint venture in the US, Boston Financial Data Services, since 1972, which has already entered the European market through its customers’ off-shore investments out of Luxembourg. The aim is that Clarke & Tilley Data Services will change its name to European Financial Data Services, and will be answerable to Boston Financial Data Services. Winn would not comment on precise growth targets in the UK, but he said European Financial Data Services aimed to be a very major player in the unit trust management market.
