Euroclear’s Elisabeth Meyers, Head of Funds Product and Sales Solutions at Euroclear, agrees that change is needed: “We need to commoditise this information. The category of investor needs to become part of the data flow right from the bottom of the chain.” However, she points out, the ability of Euroclear FundsPlace to deliver segregated information goes a long way to providing a solution.
“Where a distributor enters a fund for the first time, we make it simple for them by opening a nominee account. But we still have to give comfort to the transfer agents and the fund managers that we know who the distributor is, so we also segregate them in such a way that they are identified in the books of the fund. The fund sees the distributor’s name, not Euroclear nominee. We register in the Euroclear nominee but we give information one level down.”
“The amount of information required can slow down the process of opening a new account”, she says. “But what used to be seen as a cumbersome nuisance is increasingly seen as a necessity. Managers must be able to show who is in their fund and they like to see their success in different markets.”