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FundSERV Network Performance

All articles

By Bruce Striegler

When it comes to asset management, FundSERV takes intellectual property just as seriously as it does capital assets. Recent initiatives, overseen by Frank Vree, FundSERV's CFO, included an ambitious project to develop the means and protocols to protect the Company's intellectual property, as well as a new capital asset management plan.

"When we're talking about intellectual property, we mean the electronic standards that are used by the industry," says Vree. "The standards are fundamental to what we do. Currently these standards are available to anybody in the world with a computer and Internet access."

FundSERV's value is tied to network participation levels. It is important to protect the standards to prevent network fragmentation. The ultimate objective of the work will be to copyright the standards. "We are not alone in this," he adds. "The insurance industry has standards that are registered and their use is controlled. While that may be a model, we are nevertheless very sensitive to the needs of our customers and their vendors, since some use the standards for interoperability with non-FundSERV clients."

Expanded online services and the implementation of XML add significant additional detail in the file layouts and field definitions. "Added detail is fundamental to XML, but it also gets closer to exposure of the code, so it has become the driver of this action," he explains. "Without this protection the end result could be fragmented network participation, reduced usage and the end of universal connectivity, leading to increased unit cost."

While the intellectual property is the collective effort of many people in the industry, it has been developed under the auspices of FundSERV. "It's the cumulative work of hundreds of people, committees, working groups, vendors and staff," says Vree. "We are in the early stages of this process and are consulting with our customers. But the time is right to focus on protecting the standards and schemas while moving towards a more secure operating environment."

FundSERV customers will be asked to acknowledge FundSERV's rights as the owner of the standards, when they sign a new customer contract later this year. Access to the standards will be PKI-protected effective with the release of Standards Helpfile v15.

Designed to improve efficiency and streamline business practices, the accounting measures now in place form part of the Company's new capital asset management plan. Headed by accounting manager Eric Lim, the asset management project took months to complete. Lim and his team catalogued all physical assets, created asset cards with corresponding numbers and then entered the data into the computer accounting program. The Company also adopted a straight-line method of depreciation, amortizing the costs over the lives of the assets.

"Protecting value and being able to determine net worth is one further way we ensure a strong Company," Vree says. "Both the asset management program and the initiative to protect our intellectual property tie back to our mission of reducing time, cost and risk for the investment fund industry, because that's largely achieved through a standards-based network and workflow applications."

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