See also:

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All articles

By Carol Walker

In the early 1990s, declining returns on GIC products marked the beginning of an investor love affair with mutual funds. Then in its infancy, the mutual fund industry was ill-equipped to deal with the dramatically increasing volumes. The settlement process alone was burying the distribution network in paper. Additionally, compared to stocks and bonds, the costs to process mutual fund transactions were extremely high, marginalizing the potential for profitability. To find a solution, the industry got together through the Investment Dealers Association (IDA) Financial Administrators Section (FAS) and created a mutual fund committee.

Ian Cook, FundSERV's recently appointed CFO and vice president of corporate services, chaired the committee for a time shortly after it was created.

"We brought the IDA broker/dealers and the fund companies to the table to set some standards that would ease the back office crunch," says Cook. "There were a number of working groups involved, with people like Karen Fisher and Brian Gore heading them up. Once the initial standards were established, we realized we needed some sort of facility to funnel the hundreds and hundreds of mutual fund orders from broker/dealer branches across the country through to the many issuing fund companies, and then confirm all of these orders and settle them three days later.

"Broker/dealers began setting up automated back offices in their shops, and were counting on the fund companies to put together a network. Brad Badeau and Laurie Davis, among others, agreed to work with the fund companies to coordinate the network initiative," he says.

By 1992, when Cook's career took him in a different direction and he left the committee, the idea for a mutual fund facility had begun to take root. It became a reality one year later with the founding of a company called FundSERV Inc.

Seven years later he was asked to co-chair yet another IDA FAS committee. This time they were looking at ways to automate the insurance industry, and using FundSERV's mutual fund network as a model.

"I worked closely with Gordon Divitt and Arden Cornford and met with them here at FundSERV's office numerous times."

But once again, Cook's role at RBC Dominion Securities changed, cutting short his involvement with the insurance committee. The committee later launched the ill-fated Life Company Central (LCC) initiative. Despite the failure of LCC, Cook says the interest and need for a FundSERV-type facility is greater than ever in the insurance industry. "They're still struggling with the same back-office processes that encumber manual settlement and a lot of paper," he adds.

This past May, when approached by a recruiter to join FundSERV's executive team, Cook believed strongly that his background, skills and experience fit well with FundSERV's level of maturity as a company. "Both the chemistry and the timing seemed right," he says. "And that belief has only been strengthened in the past few months I've been here."

As CFO and vice president of the new corporate services division, Cook is responsible for risk management and finance, as well as industry relations, corporate communications, human resources and administration.

"FundSERV has a larger-than-life reputation in the marketplace — right up there with the much bigger players," he says. "Our main challenge will be in ensuring we continue to be relevant and that we maintain and live up to that reputation in the years to come. To do that, we need the same internal controls as the financial organizations we are serving, most of which will be sufficiently advanced by year-end."

He adds, "FundSERV was founded for a good logical reason for an industry at a critical time in its development. I was proud to have contributed to the idea that became FundSERV. And I am even prouder to be a part of the company it is today. I feel like I've come full circle, and I'm excited about all of the opportunities that lie ahead."

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