Cross-border funds’ automation rates reached new highs of 86.7 per cent in the last quarter of 2016, the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) has found.

In cooperation with SWIFT, EFAMA published a new report on the evolution of automation and standardisation rates if fund orders received by 29 transfer agents in cross-board fund centres Luxembourg and Ireland.

The total automation rate of processed orders increased by 1.3 per cent from the same time in 2015, to 86.7 per cent.

Furthermore, the total automation rate of orders processed by 20 transfer agents in Luxembourg rose to 84.4 per cent at the end of 2016 from 82.9 per cent in the same quarter of 2015.

In Ireland the automation rate of processed orders hit 90.6 per cent in 2016 from 89.7 per cent in Q4 2015.

Overall, the total number of orders processed by the 29 participants was 34m orders last year. Nonetheless, the 29 transfer agents manually processed 4.8m orders in 2016 compares to 5.5m in 2015.

EFAMA director general Peter De Proft, said: “Year after year, the cross-border fund industry is getting closer to their goal of automatically process at least 90% of fund orders. This means that faxes and calls are used less and less to place fund orders. This is good news because a greater level of automation raises the quality and efficiency in investor services, and reduces operational costs”.

SWIFT Global Head of Securities, Innotribe and the SWIFT Institute Fabian Vandenreydt added: “Despite a decline in numbers of orders received by cross-border transfer agents, we have seen in increase in automation rate. The industry clearly continues to focus on driving automation and efficiency, resulting in a decline in manual orders to the benefit of ISO automation. In addition, it is encouraging to see that when it comes to setting up new links, the industry confirms that ISO standards remain the most favoured and efficient automation option”.

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