Fundsquare, a subsidiary of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange and a market infrastructure dedicated to facilitating cross-border distribution of investment funds, has signed a strategic partnership with Numen, the European specialist in document process outsourcing and dematerialization. They are cooperating on the development of a solution for the automated processing of orders for investment funds.

Launched in mid-2013 in Luxembourg, Fundsquare’s mission as a market infrastructure is to facilitate and automate the relationships between the various stakeholders across the fund industry. By centralizing data, facilitating the transfer of regulatory reporting, standardizing procedures for order management, Fundsquare allows significant economies of scale while ensuring transparency and simplification of communication flows.

Partnership with Numen to automate order processing
Buying and selling investment funds is still largely a manual process. "Orders sent by fax account for more than 20% of transactions in Luxembourg. It was therefore essential, as a market infrastructure, to develop a service that can bring the sector to near-total automation, therefore greatly reducing risks and costs associated with this activity" commented Dominique Valschaerts, Chief Executive Officer, Fundsquare.

To take this leap forward in order processing automation, Fundsquare turned to Numen. "Providing a complete service including transforming fax orders into electronic messages as well as sending them in ISO format via secure networks is unique to our knowledge" added Dominique Valschaerts.

Savings estimated at more than 30%
Implementing this document management solution should generate a substantial return. "If we consider the chain from beginning to end, we estimate the savings from automation to be more than 30%, not including the benefits arising from improved processing flows, lower risks and greater transparency for investors," said Dominique Valschaerts.

"By December, we will be fully operational with the first orders being processed. We will receive thousands of faxes from which our systems will extract transactions that will be sent to transfer agents for real-time processing" concluded David Gray, General Manager, Numen Europe.