National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia’s central securities depository, and ARQA Technologies have successfully completed the process of integration of NSD’s centralized system for record keeping of mutual fund units (Mutual Fund Distribution Platform) with QUIK software (electronic trading system), allowing investors to conduct transactions with mutual fund units on the primary market. Currently, 20 market participants are connected to the Mutual Fund Distribution Platform.

The integration solution provides clients of brokers (nominee holders) with an access to collective investment market. The solution’s open architecture provides for carrying out transactions and unifying interactions between brokers, asset management companies, and specialized depositories/registrars.

The Mutual Fund Distribution Platform provides higher reliability of transactions by reducing operational risks for all parties; it contributes to the decrease of the workload on brokerage companies’ back offices through expedited processing of instructions.   

Moreover, brokerage companies may use the service of centralized record keeping of mutual fund units and get an access to the full information of instruction statuses.

Investors now may use QUIK software for generating and submitting orders to make transaction with mutual fund units, conducting a pre-trade monitoring of backing the bids for purchase/sale/exchange of mutual fund units, receiving information on balances, open positions, and monetary revaluation of the securities portfolio, and monitoring related orders’ statuses.

“NSD’s goal is to create universal conditions and infrastructure of remote sales. This requires the unification of formats and standards of data exchange, and the better transparency with regard to information disclosure.”Our joint solution will let all the participants to conduct operations actively, and the collective investment market will find an additional instrument for investments,” said Denis Buryakov, Managing Director for Depository Operations, NSD, commenting on the product launch.

“Integration implemented within the framework of the joint project allows professional participants to provide their clients with an access to a new class of instruments based on the standard servicing technologies. In particular, there is an option to buy mutual fund units via a unified broker account,” stated Vladimir Kurlyandchik, Director for Development, ARQA Technologies.  

“We see the great interest of our clients in investing in mutual funds, so of course we expect that the joint project of NSD and ARQA will be successful, as it will facilitate the process of delivering a product from an asset management company to the end client. The new service provided via QUIK, the electronic trading system known to many investors, reduces the number of mandatory bilateral procedures for interacting with asset management companies and automatically performs all functions related to securities settlements,” added Alexander Lesnov, Director for Development, KIT-Finance.

“One of key advantages of this service is that it is an additional channel for remote sales of mutual fund units.       Our clients with brokerage accounts now may use this unique and high quality service when purchasing mutual fund units directly via the QUIK trading terminal,” pointed out Sevinch Ipatova, Deputy General Director for Operations, TRANSFINGROUP Asset Management Company.