After two years of intensive collaboration, two dozen financial institutions led by UBS, Credit Suisse and Julius Baer together with fundinfo AG have agreed on publishing the openfunds standard, version 1.0, on www.openfunds.org.

Win-Win-Situation for all participantsThe non-profit initiative has defined openfunds as an efficient, cost-free and extendible standard which characterises typically used investment fund attributes, a list that today approaches 200 identifiers.

The openfunds standard benefits all stakeholders because fund data is transmitted more efficiently, quickly and accurately.

"The openfunds standard gives fund houses and distributors simple and standardised access to fund information. For banks, openfunds increases the quality of fund data while improving automation and accessibility”, says Sascha Lingling, Executive Director at Fondcenter AG, UBS Asset Management. “Distribution partners and their clients ultimately benefit from increased transparency and reliability as they can much easier evaluate and compare investment funds.”

“This unprecedented collaboration has resulted in a standard that will foster significant growth in the fund industry” said Fabio Pérez Cina, Manager in Investment Solutions and Products at Credit Suisse – Fund Lab. “openfunds is an idea whose time has come, and we look forward to promoting it as the de facto global standard for fund data interchange.”

“Efficient fund data transmission is not possible without a widely accepted standard, similar to how the World Wide Web depends on HTML.”, says Michael Partin, openfunds committee member and fundinfo CIO. “We are pleased to offer openfunds to all interested parties free of charge to help make the fund industry run more efficiently and transparently.”

openfunds is open content published under a Creative Commons Licence, which means that everyone may use the standard for free, provided that no changes are made and openfunds is mentioned as a source. More than 400 leading fund providers have already agreed to adopt the openfunds standard.