Fiserv Investment Services sees strong Asian growth

Fiserv is making a major push into investment services in Asia with some key appointments in Singapore and a solid technology line up, says Paul Thomas, managing director for international operations of Investment Services from Fiserv. “The range of solutions that we offer that are specifically focused on an investment services company is large.

We have clients in Asia who use our post-trade processing solution, TradeFlow extensively across their international operations such as Singapore Exchange and BNP Paribas Securities Services as well as others who use our core portfolio accounting platform, GIM,” said Thomas.

In Asia, Fiserv has appointed Tim Berrada as the business development director of investment services based in Singapore.

Singapore Office
So what can customers expect from Fiserv in the region? In the new risk environment, banks are focusing on areas like corporate actions, says Thomas, and this is driving automation An important area around SIBOS time is messaging, and the Fiserv suite also has strong integration capabilities that allow clients to take a financial messaging toolkit along with development tools and build rules based messaging solutions with connectivity to external systems such as SWIFT, says Thomas. So what does the establishment of the business unit within the Fiserv office in Singapore signify? Says Thomas: “We are leveraging a couple of things.

Fiserv has an extensive presence in Asia and many of our business units, such as Bank Solutions, have been operating in the region for years.

We also have a significant offshore services facility in India and we now have specialists in Singapore and Australia” he said.

Strong areas of client demand include cross-market interoperability and middle-to-back office automation including collateral management which, says Thomas, is especially important in times of pricing volatility and changing credit conditions.

Fiserv Brand Strength
The Fiserv Investment Services division was formerly CheckFree, and for Thomas, being fully integrated under the Fiserv brand has advantages.

“There is a phenomenal amount of value in transitioning into a single brand and certainly there is a significant amount of brand recognition of the Fiserv name. Aligning all of our resources behind a single brand is delivering real business value to our clients.

One thing we did when we created the Investment Services business unit was align the software assets into the unit and bring in the billing and revenue management application Advantage Fee” said Thomas.

“The Investment Services business unit is focused on leveraging the Fiserv brand to expand its presence and grow 165 relationships through third parties. In my role, I am responsible for all of our Investment Services clients outside North America.

My colleague Tim Berrada has been in Asia for over 12 years and has lots of existing relationships as well as extensive experience in Asian markets; he understands the unique requirements of the market,” added Thomas, who said he looked forward to meeting clients in the region on his trips.