Ares shares best practice in SWIFT Fund Distribution and Operation Conference

The only Regional Partner of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) in Taiwan, Ares International Corp. assisted SWIFT in holding the Fund Distribution and Operation Conference on November 13, which invites overseas investment companies and local/overseas fund automation system companies to share the current status and benefits of fund exchange STP (Straight Through Processing).

During the conference, Ares shared its experience in assisting Land Bank of Taiwan (LBOT) to implement fund automation system this year and helping the bank to directly connect to Fidelity for fund automation this October. With fund fee remaining the major segment for local trust business, LBOT expects to ease the bursting volume of operation and improve efficiency via fund exchange automation. With the introduction of fund automation system, LBOT can better differentiate its fund business and offer its customers an innovated and high-quality service. From implementation project launch, requirement review, the introduction and implementation of ARES-FSTP for Funds, testing, preparing the system go-live to the official kick-off of the system between LBOT and Fidelity, Ares uses its abundant SWIFT professional knowledge and fund automation implementation experience to provide the utmost support and assistance for LBOT.

In addition, before the end of 2008, Ares will assist LBOT to see fund automation system go live with five other fund companies (Invesco, Alliance Bernstein, BlackRock, JF Asset Management and Schroders IM). In the future, Ares will also continue assisting its bank customers to implement the fund automation system and launch tests with fund companies, aiming at the promotion of Taiwan’s fund automation with SWIFT.

Furthermore, Chi Lo, author of "Understanding China's Growth— Forces that Drive China's Economic Future", shared the connection between Asia financial crisis in 1997/1998 and the global financial crisis in 2007/2008 as well as a related analysis. Carol Hsu, assistant professor of Department of Information Management, National Taiwan University (NTU), analyzed the STP of fund exchange by the overall fund industry development. Dean Chisholm from Invesco, representing AFAC (The Asia Fund Automation Consortium), also provides the newest update about the fund automation status in Asia.

The fund business in Asia is growing rapidly, so that the task of transforming the business operation into an automatic process is indeed difficult. Meanwhile, the Asia fund industry is facing various challenges including the manual errors during the exchange process, difficulty in retaining experienced and high-quality employees and the lack of an automatic technology that has a shared model. To meet the demand of global financial institutions, SWIFT has launched the SWIFTNet Funds to promote fund sales and process automation. The organization also holds the Fund Distribution and Operation Conference each year in Taiwan, expecting to provide a platform for the Asian fund industry players to share and exchange experiences.

Introduction of Ares

Ares International Corp. is the first Taiwan-based software company to be listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE). Established for nearly 30 years, Ares is a professional management information system software provider, with professional areas in product technical R&D and system integration. Ares provides products as well as total solutions for e-enterprise, with major service fields mainly for the financial, government and enterprise sides. Ares has passed the CMMI Level 3 certification, has outstanding project integration ability, quality guarantee ability, development and maintenance ability and the most complete professional consultancy team.