There are many ways in which open architecture can be valuable for fund distribution. Financial services firms continue to explore optimal ways to digitize the account opening experience with clients and the Covid-19 pandemic further emphasized the need for more collaboration between transfer agents, asset managers and platform providers.

With a range of platforms in use, effective solutions need to be technology agnostic and be able to operate on a wide range of open IT architecture. One of the potential solutions is distributed ledger technology (DLT), however it is not yet clear what the best deployment of DLT would be for the funds industry.

In this model, DLT platforms represent an expansion of the current industry distribution model, with multiple DLT solutions that the industry needs to integrate in the same way it does with new platforms today. We continue to view the role of transfer agency as an evolving one with real growth potential and one which goes beyond trading. In our experience, asset managers spend more time working with the transfer agency than any other service, placing value on that role as it impacts on the quality of the investor experience.