Atos, the French headquartered consulting firm with 110,000 employees, has landed a blockchain contract with UK body TISA to build a MiFID II reporting solution for asset managers and advisers.
The asset management sector is ramping up its use of blockchain. Yesterday we reported that the Japan Exchange Group chose two pilot use cases focused on funds.
Other fund management blockchains include the UK’s Calastone, FundsDLT in Luxembourg, IZNES in France and FNZ in South Africa.
Atos announcement:
Note: we are experimenting with some articles, publishing the announcement, sometimes prefixed with a brief commentary.
TISA, the UK’s cross-industry financial services membership body, today announces that it has appointed Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, to build a digital utility for the asset management industry, called the TISA Universal Reporting Network (TURN). TURN is being created to ease regulatory reporting requirements for MiFID II. It will be available across Europe based on blockchain technology and is due to launch in the last quarter of 2020.
This new platform will allow asset managers and distributors – including financial advisers – to capture, share and transmit MiFID II data across Europe to all relevant stakeholders, through a standardised EMT (European MiFID II Template). All relevant parties will have access to the EMTs on a real time basis and this will be of a high and consistent quality. Currently, this exchange of information is inconsistent and sometimes firms struggle to obtain all the data they need from other firms to enable disclosure of all costs.
All stakeholders who will have access to the data can be confident that it is correct, and in a standard format.
It will also open up investment opportunities for end-customers too, as the platform should help make it easier for asset managers, distributors and their customers to ensure that the products being marketed and sold to them are comparable, clear about the costs, and appropriate for the target market.
Additionally, it will provide better consistency for asset managers when Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting obligations begin in the first half of 2021. This will also ensure the end customer is more informed about their investment options.
TURN will continue to build on the open standards (downstream, upstream and template) that has been developed with TISA members. It will be run as a not-for-profit by the users, for the users.
Jeffrey Mushens, TISA Technical Policy Director, commented: “Atos has been appointed as the vendor to collate and share the data collected. After a competitive pitch process, it was clear that Atos had the strongest reach and technical capability, enhanced by their clear sense of enthusiasm to be involved with this game-changing project.”
“The impact will be substantial, especially to firms working in this space across Europe. The utility is clearly a sought-after ambition as we have been working with our members, including European asset managers, distributors, platforms, and IT firms to identify and address their needs through TURN. We expect that the solution will enable the future delivery of key data for ESG as well as for feedback and other regulatory requirements. This is an industry-led and run, not-for-profit initiative that will ultimately ensure that consumers are offered the best and most suitable products.”
Adrian Davis, Head of Markets (Global) Financial Services & Insurance Industry Consulting, said: “We are delighted to partner with TISA to develop and operate the bespoke and highly innovative MiFID II blockchain utility which will provide a revolutionary and secure data exchange solution for the asset management industry.”
“This partnership further increases our presence within the investment sector, building on the already strong presence of Atos within the UK financial services industry.”
Atos was appointed as the preferred supplier after a competitive pitch process which saw 13 firms return proposals to TISA.
