JPMorgan and BlackRock announced on September 15 that they are working together with Saphyre – a fintech company powered by patented AI technology for workflow management and the metadata tagging and tracking of documents – to help asset managers digitize the process of opening new accounts with custodians and broker dealers.
It is one of those overlooked areas of client onboarding, deep in the guts of financial markets, which has always been cumbersome and where matters seemed to be getting worse even before Covid sent everyone to work from home.
For an asset manager establishing a new fund that intends to invest globally, or in multiple countries, it may be necessary to set up accounts not just with a lead custodian but perhaps as many as 50 broker dealers.
Before the eager portfolio manager can send that first trade into the order management system (OMS), it can take weeks of shuffling documents, often the same ones being delivered many times over to different parties in different formats, satisfying know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering requirements, securing agreements and approvals and confirming these with signatures.
Naveen
