Novia Global, the Bath, England-based international platform business, is today pulling the wraps off a new platform ‘functionality’ it’s quietly developed exclusively for the international trusts industry – which, Novia Global chief executive Bill Vasilieff says, actually requested it.
The reason they asked for it, he explains, is because trust industry practitioners typically struggle with the extensive reporting requirements they have, which involve monitoring the performance of the assets held in the trusts which they are responsible for.
There are also so-called “dual authorisation requirements” – sometimes referred to as the “four eyes principle” – with trusts, which means that more than one person is required to carry out and authorise certain transactions on a trust portfolio…
The ‘trust performance’ issue
Trustee responsibility for trust performance has been a growing issue in the industry recently – in part as a result, some say, of some high-profile lawsuits that have seen trust beneficiaries sue trustees for failing to oversee their trust’s liquid assets properly.
Vasilieff says that because Novia Global’s new trust functionality makes use of “real data” to give trustees and financial advisers the ability to monitor and compare, in detail, how the various DFMs are performing, and also “the ability to switch DFMs at the touch of a button”, it offers trustees a tool for boosting their oversight – and thus, at least potentially, heading off such problems…
Nine DFMs
Novia Global is setting out its new trust functionality with an initial panel of nine discretionary fund management services: Marlborough, Smith & Williamson, MitonOptimal, Tavistock Investments, City Asset Management, Bordier & Cie, Brooks Macdonald, LGT Vestra – and Novia’s own in-house DFM, London-based Copia Capital Management…
[Source: International Investment - Helen Burgraff - April 2017]
