Milford transition from TE to MMC completed

Auckland-headquartered fund administration firm, MMC, have completed the transition of Milford Asset Management’s unit registry from previous provider, Trustees Executors.

In a statement, Milford head of products and operations, Mark Ryland, said the firm consolidated its back-office services under MMC to drive efficiencies and underpin the manager’s integrated “investor portal”.

“Milford has a vision of developing and controlling our own investor portal where all solutions can be integrated into a single location. To do this we needed to partner with a provider that has the technology and capability today and in the future to help drive our clients’ experience,” Ryland said.

He said Milford had already seen improvements in back-office processes since shifting to MMC for unit pricing and fund accounting services more than three years ago.

MMC picked up the Milford registry contract last year after serving as the manager’s fund accounting and unit pricing provider since 2014. Milford manages more than $5 billion across its range of 20-plus KiwiSaver and portfolio investment entity (PIE) funds.

“It made sense to have all of our investment funds’ administration services with MMC to leverage that service and technology,” Ryland said in the release.

“The nine month project involved the transition of over 30,000 investors and five million historical transactions from the last ten years which, together with the data provided through MMC’s APIs [application programming interface], helped power the successful first stage of our investor portal.”

Tom Reiher, MMC chief, said the Milford transition highlighted how cutting-edge technology could help fund managers deliver on their growth strategies and improve client services.

“Specifically, in addition to MMC’s KiwiSaver registry capabilities, an important catalyst for Milford for the transition was the ability to receive a full suite of APIs to support the Milford portal,” Reiher said in the statement. “MMC’s API technology allows clients to create powerful interactions between themselves and their investors.”

For example, he said the MMC technology allowed Milford investors to produce individualised investment returns via the web portal.

The move marked a heightened focus for MMC on investor-facing technology to build on its traditional strengths as a fund back-office administration provider, Reiher said.

“By offering a variety of service options including APIs and hosted solutions, MMC is able to put their clients’ requirements and brand first, with flexible platforms and styling customisations,” he said.

MMC has more than $43 billion in funds under advice across 26 clients. Following the Milford deal, the business also provides registry services for over 100,000 investors including with foundation KiwiSaver clients Simplicity and Generate.

“This is a strategic growth area for MMC,” Reiher said.