Our free roundup includes news about Deutsche Bank Wealth Management & QPLIX, ING & HQLAx, and SIX Group & Know Your Customer.
Pershing Says New Pricing Meets Client Needs
Officials at BNY Mellon’s Pershing, a clearing and custody services provider, report that they are offering two new pricing options for registered investment advisors (RIAs) that use the Pershing custody platform — monthly subscription and zero-transaction-fee pricing — in addition to the current variable pricing method.
The new pricing methods constitute an effort by Pershing to align its offerings more closely to client preferences, says Jim Crowley, CEO for Pershing, in a prepared statement.
The subscription-based pricing for advisors features: a tiered subscription model, starting at $25 per month (fees tiered based on the amount of assets); no transaction fees on exchange traded funds (ETFs), equities, fixed income securities, and mutual funds; tiered competitive cash yields for clients using cash as an investment vehicle; and access to BNY Mellon’s forthcoming suite of ETFs (assets held in BNY Mellon ETFs will be excluded from the subscription fee calculation), officials say.
Pershing is targeting the new zero-transaction-fee pricing option at advisory firms that want a lower-cost solution for portfolios that favor equities and ETFs, officials say.
“As the rest of our competitors double down on the direct-to-consumer retail channel, we are proud to be the only custodian doubling down on the future of the RIA business,” says Ben Harrison, head of business development and relationship management for the RIA custody business at Pershing, in a statement.
In addition to RIAs, Pershing and its affiliates serve broker-dealers, family offices, hedge funds, ’40 Act fund managers, and wealth managers. Pershing provides custody services for more than $800 billion in advisory assets, officials say.
Deutsche Bank Wealth Management Partners with QPLIX
Deutsche Bank towers
Deutsche Bank’s Wealth Management business and the financial technology start-up QPLIX GmbH are combining efforts so that the QPLIX platform provides family offices, asset managers and pension funds that use Deutsche Private Port can have an overview of all asset classes, officials say.
To fund the new development, Deutsche Bank has acquired a minority stake in the QPLIX platform, which will be revamped to serve an international clientele, officials say. The remaining OPLIX shares will be owned by the three QPLIX founders Kai Linde, Mathias Lindermeir and Philipp Pötzl.
“In the future, Wealth Management will use the QPLIX platform to provide its clients with access to a digital platform for the holistic management and control of large assets,” according to a joint press release. “In turn, QPLIX clients will gain access to around 100 data interfaces. The agreement will create one of the largest banking networks in Europe.”
In the future, the QPLIX software will become the basis for Deutsche Private Port, the digital investment office of Deutsche Bank Wealth Management, officials say. The Deutsche Private Port (DPP) via the QPLIX platform will be able to “map, analyze and manage all asset classes including illiquid investments such as real estate and private equity,” officials say.
Officials say the cross-bank transparency will facilitate: evaluation tools for overviews of total assets with performance and risk analyses and warning systems for compliance with investment guidelines; access to modern evaluation views anytime, anywhere and from different devices; functions for creating report packages for information to asset holders and committees; and digital account opening support for asset managers.
ING Invests in Blockchain-based Securities Lending System
Dutch banking giant ING reports that it has invested in a blockchain-based securities lending platform, dubbed HQLAx, that has been live since December 2019.
The bank’s blockchain team “developed the initial version of the HQLAx application, which uses blockchain to facilitate efficient and high-speed trading of high-quality liquid assets (HQLA),” according to bank officials.
“The successful commercial launch of HQLAx is a big milestone for the implementation of blockchain in the securities lending market and proof that blockchain can bring tangible benefits to the industry,” says Mariana Gomez de la Villa, program director for distributed ledger technology at ING, in a prepared statement. “It’s rewarding to see that a project we’ve been working on for years, is now live.”
ING and HQLAx began their partnership in 2018 “to carry out the first-ever live securities trade on a blockchain platform,” ING officials say in a recent blog. “Together with Credit Suisse, we swapped €25 million worth of high-quality liquid assets using the collateral lending application of HQLAx on R3’s Corda distributed ledger platform.”
The partnership’s efforts target the need among banks for high-quality liquid assets “to meet tougher liquidity requirements under Basel III. These are assets that can easily and immediately be converted into cash without losing their value. However, holding too many lowers their return. Efficient trading allows banks to optimize their balance sheets,” officials say.
The HQLAx platform “enables market participants to redistribute their collateral by exchanging the ownership of tokenized securities on Corda’s blockchain platform, which no longer requires the underlying securities to move across users,” Gomez de la Villa says. “This removes settlement barriers and improves collateral fluidity, which in turn allows users to manage their liquidities easier, faster and more efficiently.”
SIX Group Uses RegTech Vendor for Due Diligence
SIX Group is using a due diligence platform from a regulatory technology vendor known as Know Your Customer to “increase the accuracy of its risk calculations on suppliers that provide services and products to companies that are members of the Swiss exchange eco-system,” officials say.
The Know Your Customer platform provides direct connection to official company registries and instant identification of Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs), officials say. The platform helps SIX Group investigate the company structure of its existing and prospective suppliers to help reduce the risk related to money laundering and financing of terrorism.
Know Your Customer targets financial institutions and regulated organizations via its digital solutions for anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) compliance.
SIX Group operates the Swiss Stock Exchange and provides the infrastructure for the Swiss financial services industry, officials say. An association of banks oversees and owns the Swiss Stock Exchange. SIX connects financial market participants in Switzerland and throughout the world.
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