SunGard announced in a press release, "The Use of Money Market Funds and Independent Dealing Portals Grows, According to SunGard's Annual Corporate Cash Management Study." The SunGard study says, "SunGard has completed its third annual cash management study, which highlights increased use of money market funds and independent portals as companies seek to operate smarter and unlock trapped cash in regulated markets, while finding suitable repositories for large cash balances. Based on responses from more than 160 corporations globally, the study examines corporate treasurers' changing attitudes toward cash investment over the last 12 months, including strategic cash holdings, asset allocation, investment policies and transaction execution." We also review some other portal news from the AFP Conference in Las Vegas. (Note: `Crane Data's Peter Crane speaks this morning on "Emerging Issues in Money Market Funds".)
It explains, "Survey participants responded on behalf of treasury centers located in North America (47 percent), Europe (32 percent), the Middle East and North Africa (6 percent), Asia (5 percent), and Africa and Central, Eastern and Southern Europe (10 percent). Key findings of the report include the following: Forty-three percent of companies increased the amount of surplus cash held -- up from 37 percent in 2012; Since 2012, the proportion of companies holding cash in short-term money market funds (MMFs) -- typically constant net asset value (NAV), AAA-rated MMFs -- has risen from 40 to 52 percent, although the share of cash companies held in these MMFs has decreased from 50 percent to 44 percent; Although the percentage of companies invested in variable NAV MMFs remained steady since last year, corporate investors increased their share of cash held in these MMFs from 36 to 44 percent; A dramatic reduction in the use of telephone transactions for short-term investments has taken place, from 51 percent in 2012 to 30 percent in 2013; and, The preference for independent portals over proprietary bank portals has reversed since 2012, with 35 percent preferring independent portals -- an increase of 15 percentage points."
Vince Tolve, VP of SunGard's brokerage business, comments, "Managing risk has become a growing priority from an operational perspective. Companies are increasingly recognizing the advantages of electronic trading, as well as independent price discovery and execution with multiple counterparties through a single channel." The release adds, "The SGN Short-Term Cash Management portal is a global, multi-fund trading platform that helps corporate treasurers increase efficiency in researching, analyzing and gathering relevant information to help optimize short-term investment strategies."
Another announcement, entitled, "BNY Mellon Releases Liquidity Aggregator," explains, "BNY Mellon, the global leader in investment management and investment services, has added to its arsenal of risk and collateral management-related services with the introduction of the Liquidity Aggregator, available through the company's Liquidity DIRECT portal.... The Liquidity Aggregator, a companion to BNY Mellon's Liquidity DIRECT solution, was created to help clients gain a new level of insight into their investments, across all across all US and Non-US Domiciled Funds in their portfolios."
Kurt Woetzel, CEO of BNY Mellon's Global Collateral Services (GCS) business, tells us, "As Markets expand globally, the need to analyze and quantify your portfolio return and liquidity risk is paramount. The Liquidity Aggregator offers clients a deeper view of exposure and risk, which is essential to managing their investments." Jonathan Spirgel, EVP and head of GCS sales and relationship management at BNY Mellon, adds, "Nearly all financial transactions and commitments have liquidity implications. To be highly effective, liquidity risk management requires insights, tools, products and services that support a client's ability to both maximize liquidity and analyze investment exposure."
The release explains, "The system is designed to help clients actively monitor and help to control liquidity risk exposures and manage funding needs, taking into account security types; country and region of exposure; country and region of risk; weighted average yields and maturities. Clients can leverage the new dashboard across their entire investment portfolio to view: Exposure across all funds with positions; Money market mutual fund full holdings in a single place; Largest holdings in the portfolio by security type and issuer across multiple funds, with the ability to determine shared securities; and Trends and reporting for month-end and at 6-month intervals for money market mutual funds daily yields, WAM and holdings."
Finally, a release titled, "MyTreasury announces addition of BofA fund to its cash investment portal," says, "MyTreasury, a leading multi-product cash investment portal, announces today that its customer BofA Global Capital Management has added several of its domestic BofA Funds to the MyTreasury platform. The addition of the domestic BofA Funds to the MyTreasury portal will help corporate treasurers, municipalities, asset managers and other institutional investors to conveniently and efficiently access BofA Global Capital Management's domestic fund offering. The BofA Funds are conservatively managed money market mutual funds that employ rigorous risk management processes to pursue three key objectives: capital preservation, maintenance of liquidity and competitive yields."
Justin Meadows, CEO of MyTreasury, tells us, "We continue to grow our portal with the strategic addition of U.S.-based funds, and BofA Global Capital Management is a welcome addition to our growing list of fund managers. BofA Global Capital Management's commitment to transparency, high credit quality and diversification in their offerings is very much in line with our value proposition, which will help to greatly simplify our customers' due diligence process, and assist them in making key decisions most suitable to their investment policies."
