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Citi Securities Services takes custody of Ausbil
Australian fund manager Ausbil, which has $16.6 billion in assets under management in active and global equity strategies across an institutional, wholesale and retail client base, has appointed Citi Security Services to provide it with custody and funds administration services. Its previous custodian was NAB Asset Servicing (NAS), still in the process of winding down its operations.
“We are pleased to appoint Citi to provide custody and investment administration services,” said Ausbil CEO Mark Knight. “Citi is uniquely placed to deliver the operational support to fuel our growth ambitions and enhance the experience for our investors. Both transition teams did a great job.”
Citi Securities Services has onboarded 30 Australian clients since 2020, including 26 from RBC Treasury & Investor Services in 2021, where the likes of BetaShares, Pinnacle, AMP North and Yarra Capital came across in a deal that added $100 billion in assets to its local business and pushed it to number two on the ACSA sub-custody tables. It also picked up $6.5 billion wealth manager Mason Stevens last year, and the latest appointment by Ausbil follows a “rigorous tender and due diligence process”.
“Citi’s ability to successfully and seamlessly onboard clients is one of our key strengths,” said Mark England, head of Citi Securities Services in Australia and New Zealand. “Our deeply embedded local market knowledge and commitment to client support, coupled with our best-in-class suite of solutions across execution, data and digital services are what made us an ideal partner for Ausbil.”
Citi also brokered a referral agreement with NAS in mid-2023; under that agreement NAS introduced a set number of clients to Citi, which had already been “respectfully” positioning itself with them as questions about NAS’ future grew during an on again, off again sale process. The relationship between the two businesses goes back to 2015, when Citi began providing NAS and its clients with global custody services.
At the time, Citi hoped that its experience transferring RBC’s clients in a relatively short 24-month window – which this publication described as “one of the biggest and most complex of back office transitions” – would be enough to entice some NAS clients across.
“We’ve done a number of due diligence sessions where they’ve talked about the way they service their clients,” England told ISN at the time. “They’ve talked about processes are automated and where they are manual; they’ve talked about publication and activity points within a particular day, and it’s all done on a portfolio basis rather than a client-specific basis. But I think it’s been hugely beneficial for us to get that understanding.
