Financial systems provider SS&C Technologies, which last December bought most of the business of DST International in Australia, has expanded its Australasian reach after signing up New Zealand firm Trustee Executors (TE) to its enterprise reporting and investment portal platform, Pages.
A press statement announcing the deal said TE would use Pages “to automate the production of communications, including quarterly investment reports, statements, and self-service reporting access for fund managers and super funds”.
The NZ firm had been a long-standing client of DST’s institutional back-office system Hi-Portfolio, which is the most ubiquitous funds management system of its type in both Australasia and the UK.
Nadine Moore, SS&C’s head of Australia and New Zealand, said that while the company had had a presence in Australia since 2000, the acquisition of DST had bolstered its global operational footprint. She said although SS&C was already well known for its wealth management offering, it had strengthened SS&C’s institutional presence in the region, also allowing for the capitalisation on various synergies within the group.
SS&C bought DST Global Solutions’ Hi-Portfolio and retail-oriented super fund system Anova from the US company, leaving behind the Blue Door administration system as the mainstay of DST’s remaining Australian business.
Moore said that Anova represented a new segment of the market in Australia for SS&C – that of super funds. The product offers a range of features including data integration across platforms, APRA compliance, performance attribution, intra-day information and more.
“It’s very exciting,” she said. “Many big super funds are insourcing some investment management capabilities from multiple managers, which is well suited for Anova. We’re also seeing a push for better analytics and reporting in fund accounting and the combination of Anova with our web-based reporting solution have us well positioned to address this requirement.”
She said that Hi-Portfolio, the Australian-built system which started to take over most of the institutional funds management back-office market in Australia in the 1990s, would continue to evolve, while presenting an opportunity to integrate SS&C’s other capabilities, such as enterprise reporting, offering potential synergies down the track. SS&C already has deep experience in hosting and outsourcing too so there is a lot more we can offer Australian institutional and wealth firms.
Moore also hinted that SS&C’s acquisition trail might not yet have come to an end. “We’ve completed about 40 acquisitions in the past 19 years and we are still highly acquisitive,” she said.
* Greg Bright is publisher of Investor Strategy News (Australia)