JPMorgan Securities Services was the clear winner for the prize of securities services house of the year. The American bank has demonstrated the value of a broad product range combined with successful delivery.
Conrad Kozak, JPMorgan’s Worldwide Securities Services’ Securities Company Executive, says that three deals in particular demonstrate the value that JPMorgan is providing in the securities world.
The first is provision of Freddie Mac’s administration and settlement functions for its $700bn portfolio of longer-term assets including its mortgage-backed securities, plus $70bn portfolio of shorter term assets.
“Freddie Mac is a huge custody deal, showing that despite our diversification we haven’t moved away from our core business, we’ve grown into other areas. We’re very proud that we can manage such a conversion almost flawlessly,” says Mr Kozak.
“At what could be considered the other end of the scale we have the Henderson deal where they outsourced their hedge fund middle office processing to us, demonstrating the success that we’ve had in the alternative investment area where we have and continue to make significant investments in private equity, hedge fund servicing, global derivatives and leveraged loans.”
The third area, investment operations outsourcing, he notes is one that some in the industry have labelled a fad, but Mr Kozak stresses: “We see it is the way of the future. Increasingly, investment managers don’t want to tie their capital up in middle and back office systems. They want someone to do that so they can do what they do best. Our deal with Threadneedle in this area is a great example of matching supply to demand.”
As customers’ needs have grown, Mr Kozak says the bank has risen to match those needs. “Fifteen years ago it was enough for a bank like ours to settle securities in 80 markets around the world, to do corporate actions, to collect income and not lose those securities.
“These days that is the basic stuff, we need to do fund accounting really well, investment operations outsourcing really well, transfer agency, derivatives processing – all of those value-added things that our clients need us to do.”
