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State Street joins up insto servicing with retail demand
(Pictured: Sinclair Scholfield)
State Street, the big global custodian bank and fund manager, and FNZ, the global systems company with humble beginnings in New Zealand, have forged an unlikely alliance. They are looking to provide institutional-grade securities servicing to the member-direct market.
At first glance these two companies do not seem to have much in common. This old grand Bostonian and the young upstart Kiwi actually have very similar attributes, and what’s more many of these attributes are complementary.
As Sinclair Scholfield, State Street’s head of business development and sales, says: State Street and FNZ are both custodians. State Street is an industrial giant and handles with much aplomb the big end of town. It does work for companies that have an exceptional amount of money and complex institutional needs. It is in its way the terminator of custody in “that’s what it does and all it does.” Everything it does is connected to doing custody. That is precisely the reason that it understands FNZ, and why it can see the value of ‘working together’. FNZ is simply a custodian for individuals. And therein lays both the similarity and the compatibility. One does the macro custody the other the micro custody. From an operational viewpoint they undertake many similar tasks – safekeeping, custody, record keeping, taxation, accounting and performance reporting. It just who they do them for. State Street does the institutions and FNZ the individuals. It’s a very nice match.
The combined companies can jointly do just about anything that a wealth management company desires from investor to depository. What’s more this can be done seamlessly and cost effectively for the wealth manager. It allows them to go into the ‘untapped’ self-managed super market, which is 33 per cent of the total superannuation industry. This allows them to apply an industrial strength solution to a ‘cottage industry’ that has around $500 billion in assets.
So quite quickly who have a combination that can drastically lower the cost of doing business for the wealth management business in this country. Surely that’s worth a closer look?
State Street and FNZ will be speaking at the conference My Platform Rules.
