New platform offering for investment space

DST Global (DST) has announced the launch of its Anova platform in Australia and New Zealand as part of its administrative solutions for investment managers.

According to DST, the platform provides investment data aggregation and visualisation reports with an emphasis on performance, risk and regulatory reporting. DST also stated that Anova will reduce complexity and cost and save time for funds managers and custodians looking to consolidate fragmented data.

David Rhind, investment accounting solutions at DST, said that while some superannuation funds may have the foresight of consolidation, they may not have significant systems in place to meet the administration requirements. He also said institutional clients were starting to follow the retail market in terms of turning away from "one-stop shops" for their investment needs.

"They (wholesale clients) often use a 'best of breed' approach in terms of the services offered by a funds manager rather than the software used for administration," Rhind said.

"As superannuation funds grow larger they will face challenges in the same way that asset managers will face challenges (and that is) around having disparate sources of data."

He said the challenge for custodians arises because wholesale clients want one place to see where all their investments are sitting. DST's new system tries to deal with these issues by supporting uninterrupted, near-real time reporting from any data source to provide tailored analytical and investment reports.

While there are enterprise data management tools already being used in the investment management industry, they often fall down on presenting data and don't have a focus on investment management as the Anova system does, Rhind said.

"The Australian investment industry is now making the tackling of the data management challenge a priority as demands for transparency and more frequent reporting increase," said DST managing director - Asia Pacific Philip Hogan.