BST Awards 2023: Best integrated back-office platform—Temenos

Overview

Temenos Multifonds is a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-ready, AI-driven platform designed to support fund administrators, asset managers, transfer agencies, insurance providers, and pension funds to achieve efficiencies in their middle- to back-office operations. Multifonds is currently utilized by nine out of the top 15 global asset servicers, supporting over 30,000 funds (both traditional and alternative) across 35 jurisdictions. The platform offers solutions for investment accounting, transfer agency and investor servicing, as well as net asset value (NAV) oversight and contingency.

The solution  

• Investment accounting: a single, global platform for driving operational efficiency for the middle office (investment book of record) and fund accounting (accounting book of record). It combines asset servicing, position keeping, valuation, and accounting functions for both traditional and alternative funds.
• Investor servicing and transfer agency: digitizes onboarding and streamlines distribution chain; leverages API, Swift and NSCC integration for efficiency and risk reduction; supports full investment lifecycle, including investor due diligence, cash management, distribution fees and retrocessions, performance fees, data protection, and tax

Secret sauce 

• Workflow and exception management with more than 300 user-definable controls to improve fund operations’ efficiency in meeting NAV and distribution deadlines
• Explainable AI (XAI) identifies false positives and provides transparent explanations for decisions
• Real-time processing with integrated Ibor and Abor views
• Time stamping and time zone capability
• Multifonds datamart (Ibor, Abor and Tbor) enables rapid responses to market challenges, preventing potential losses
• Specialized migration tool, proven to reduce the duration and effort of migration projects by 50% to 75%

Recent milestones

• Enhanced investor servicing for private equity and retailization
• Developed new functions to address the top three challenges by traditional and private managers: scalability, liquidity, and compliance
• Able to onboard an unlimited number of investors with know-your-customer and anti-money laundering frameworks
• Modern UI on OpenStack offering low-code user experience
• Added support for new regulations: tracking/reporting Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian tax, capital gains tax, and total cost ratio
• Added distribution capabilities for French regulatory changes in September 2023

Future objectives 

• Developing regional functionalities and modules for the Brazil and Latin American markets
• Partnering with REAG Investimentos, the second largest fund administrator in Brazil
• Enhancing alternative funds capabilities across Asian markets
• Partnering with CAMS, which serves 69% of transfer agency in Indian market
• Facilitating on-premises to SaaS migration, enabling cost-effective scaling as clients expand into new markets

Why they won

Temenos’ Multifonds platform maintains its winning ways in the annual BST Awards, repeating last year’s win in one of the highest profile categories of all 35 on offer: the best integrated back-office platform. Automation and efficiency are at the heart of the Multifonds platform, providing buy-side firms and their various partners and service providers with a single middle- to back-office platform that supports investment accounting, transfer agency, investor servicing, and net asset value calculations/sight. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the bulk of the industry’s fund servicers rely on the Multifonds platform to support their and their clients’ day-to-day functions.