EFAMA and SWIFT publish on a bi-yearly basis trends in standardisation and automation rates of fund orders received by transfer agents (TAs) in Luxembourg and Ireland. These reports showing the evolution of standardisation and automation rates of funds orders are available on both EFAMA and SWIFT websites dating back to May 2009.

This Mid-year report gives an update about the evolution during the first half of 2020. The report combines the Luxembourg and Ireland data into one single cross-border fund processing report providing an aggregated view of both fund processing centres and a detailed overview per fund processing centre.

The goal of this initiative is to inform all institutions involved in fund processing, as well as the European authorities and interested stakeholders about the industry’s progress towards greater automation of fund orders and use of the ISO messaging standards recommended by EFAMA.

Cross-border fund processing standardisation in Luxembourg and Ireland

Key insights of the combined surveys coverage:

• 28 transfers agents (TAs) surveyed: 19 in Luxembourg and 9 in Ireland
• With an estimated market coverage of 80% of the cross-border market volumes in Ireland and 75% in Luxembourg.
• Standardisation data collected on 23 million incoming orders in H1 2020
• In the first half of 2020, the total volume of orders increased by 2.9% to 23 million orders, compared to 22.4 million orders in the second half of 2019.
• The volume of automated processed orders increased by 3.3% to 21.1 million in H1 2020 (against 20.5 million in H2 2019).
• In the first half of 2020, the adoption of ISO messaging standards (composed of ISO 15022 and 20022 messages) decreased by 5.3 percentage points to 57%. In parallel, the use of proprietary ftp increased by 5.4 p.p. to 34.9% and the manual processing rate remains stable at 8.1%.