EMXCo, the UK-based technology company that owns the EMX Message System used by fund managers and fund distributors to exchange information about purchases, sales, valuations and settlements of unitized funds, says it is now routing 650,000 messages and EUR1.8 billion of orders a month.
SWIP (Scottish Widows Investment Partnership), Turcan Connell, AVIVA, Norwich Union Life and Pensions, Prudential Unit Trusts and F&C have all signed up to the EMX Message System in recent months.
The number of cross border participants, such as Franklin Templeton, is also growing. Hedge fund managers, many joining the system through EMXCo’s Luxembourg operation, are also finding EMX useful.
Old Mutual Asset Managers (UK) have made Old Mutual Prosper 80 available on the EMX Message System – the first “structured” product to be supported.
“We’ve always believed that distributors drive the market and their commitment to our superb straight through processing system has led in turn to them encouraging more fund managers to adopt the same system,” says EMXCo CEO Max Wright.
Skandia are one such distributor. They have been using the EMX Message System for over four years now. “We are committed to automated trading and it is important that new UK Fund Managers to the Skandia platform also make such a commitment to ‘straight through processing’ with EMX being the preferred message system,” says Peter Fleming of Skandia.
Wright says the long term aim of EMX is to become the standard around which the European funds industry automates. “We have moved the business to the point where we are acknowledged as the de facto standard and are very excited about the next phase of our growth as we extend the product and geographical reach of the EMX Message System,” he says.