Xafinity Paymaster has started live trading with its fund managers after launching its straight through processing (STP) service.
The organisation has automated the investment process using two practices called the Altus Instruction Gateway and ViaNova. The latter allows pension administrators to send investment instructions to fund managers electronically over a secure financial messaging network.
Xafinity Paymaster’s process aims to ensure administrators can offer a more efficient service to clients and drastically reduce the risks associated with manual processing. Xafinity has implemented the market practice in full including the issue and confirmation of investment instructions, pricing reports and holding statements.
Meanwhile, the Altus Instruction Gateway is designed to make the adoption of an STP simpler quicker and more economic for pension administrators. Traditionally, this has often been a long and expensive process with deployment projects running for many months, or in some cases, over a year.
Ben Cocks, products director at Altus said: “STP doesn’t have to be expensive and it doesn’t necessarily require a long deployment project. Even against the demanding requirements of Xafinity we’ve shown that we can deliver in very short timescales. The market has been waiting for a comprehensive off-the-shelf solution for STP and with the release of our Altus Instruction Gateway hosted service we are already beginning to see
a new wave of administrators adopting ViaNova.”
Matt Pittman, director of operations at Xafinity Paymaster, said: “Our hope is that this rapid project delivery can spur both the market and the investment management community to adopt new standards in relation to these processes. A joined up approach between STP and the cash settlement process is critical to delivering defined
contribution scheme members the levels of customer service that they should expect of their providers.”