Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund Live on Omgeo Central Trade Manager and Omgeo Alert

May 12, 2011 - PRLog -- Mumbai – May 10, 2011 - Omgeo, the global standard for post-trade efficiency, today announced that Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company Ltd, one of India’s flagship mutual fund managers, is the first domestic fund manager to go live on Omgeo Central Trade ManagerSM (Omgeo CTM) and Omgeo ALERTSM for cross-border post-trade processing. Birla Sun Life is a joint venture between the Aditya Birla Group and Canadian fund manager Sun Life Financial Services Inc. Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund offers a range of investment options and invests in domestic and international markets.

In 2003, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) mandated that market participants replace paper-based institutional equity post-trade details with an electronic straight through processing (STP) service. The mandate enabled market participants to significantly accelerate the domestic trade process in India, promote same day affirmation (SDA) and ensure a smooth transition to a T+2 settlement cycle. As a result, and according to a recent Omgeo discussion paper on SDA, India has achieved the highest settlement efficiency scores in the world. Now, investment managers in India are looking to replicate this level of efficiency for their international, cross-border trades. Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund's adoption of Omgeo CTM puts the company at the forefront of this trend.

Omgeo CTM enables Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund to automatically match the details of their cross-border transactions, thereby minimizing the inefficiency and operational risk associated with manual trade processing. The company also gains access to Omgeo’s global community of 6000 broker/dealers and investment managers.
Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund has also implemented Omgeo ALERT, the industry’s largest web-based global database for the maintenance and communication of standing settlement and account instructions (SSI). With ALERT, Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund can automatically enrich their Omgeo CTM trade details with ALERT data, ensuring the most current, accurate and compliant SSIs are included.  In addition, by opting for the settlement notification feature in Omgeo CTM, Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund now has the ability to send settlement messages in SWIFT industry-standard formats to custodians and interested third parties from one reliable source.
"Implementing Omgeo CTM and Omgeo ALERT has enabled us to improve the efficiency of our settlement process”, stated A.Balasubramanian, Chief Executive Officer from Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company Ltd.

“We expect this will result in more trades settling on time and a significantly reduced number of instances where client and counterparty instructions are mismatched,” says Ashok Suvarna, Chief Operations Officer from Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company Ltd.

“We are very pleased that Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company Ltd has chosen to join our global community.” said James E. Drumm, Executive Director Asia Pacific at Omgeo. “Birla Sun Life’s adoption of Omgeo CTM will enable the company to achieve increased scalability and accelerate their settlement cycle as their international investments grow, while clearly demonstrating a commitment to robust operational risk management practices.”

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About Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company Ltd.
Established in 1994, Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company Limited (BSLAMC) is a joint venture between Aditya Birla Group, a well known Indian conglomerate and Sun Life Financial Inc, leading international financial services organization from Canada.
BSLAMC is the 5th largest asset management company in India with average assets under management of Rs 63,696 crores for the quarter, January - March 2011. An impressive mix of reach through 104 branches, wide range of product offerings across equity, debt, balanced as well as structured asset classes and strong investment performance has helped the Company garner over 2.4 Million investor scheme accounts. Known for its consistent investment performance, BSLAMC has received recognition from various institutes of international repute like Lipper and The Asset Magazine - Hong Kong. For more information, please visitwww.birlasunlife.com.