Australian bank Macquarie’s investment platform business, Macquarie Wrap, has launched a new online election service for corporate actions. The aim of the new service is to expedite the processing of corporate actions for listed equities and improve the efficiency of advisers and their support staff, says Doug Chang, head of product for Macquarie Wrap.
The service is in response to client requests, says Chang: “We are constantly seeking feedback from advisers who use Macquarie Wrap and we aim to take action on their suggested improvements.” It is also part of the business’ ongoing focus on minimising equity administration and simplifying systems surrounding this area, he adds.
Users of the service are able to elect in bulk for corporate actions across multiple clients in a single click, says Chang. The system also provides email notifications and reminders aimed at improving workflow processes, thus removing the need for follow up by validating client elections as the adviser authorises them and improving the audit trail by maintaining election history online for 13 months.
The online service also provides a corporate actions calendar to notify advisers of upcoming and currently active corporate offers, matched against a list of their clients, using Macquarie Wrap, who are eligible to take part.
Investment firm Link Financial Services is already using the new service to add value to its client offering. Benjamin Kohn, director of the firm, explains: “The new online service from Macquarie Wrap is an excellent initiative that has allowed us to be more efficient and proactive in our communication of these events with our clients. Along with being able to transact with ease, the ability to track outstanding actions for clients is especially important as part of building on the service and support we can provide to them.”
This new offering is one of a number of new launches in the corporate actions space over the last few months. In June, Broadridge Financial Services and cloud services specialist Xignite both launched new offerings on the market in the form of Broadridge’s Global Corporate Actions Solution (GCAS) and XigniteCorporateActions.
Much like Macquarie Wrap’s new service, Xignite’s offering is also based on a web platform and seeks to appeal to the mid to lower end of the market. Given the tough economic climate, pitches to this corner of the market are likely to prove more popular than high cost, full scale implementations due to cost and time pressures. The logic behind this is that a web rollout can be effected relatively quickly and users can adopt a pay as you go approach to the service, thus allowing them to scale up or scale down as required.
