Linedata Preps Mshare for Fatca, Swift MX Changes

For the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca), Linedata has added in a host of investor and fund checks to Mshare, which firms use to hold all investor data, so users can keep track of the new varieties of entities that have been created by this legislation, says Noreen Crowe, Linedata's vice president in charge of Mshare product management.

"We've been consulting with user groups, done all sorts of research and read through the regulations, and tried to implement as many checks and balances on the system for Fatca as we could knowing the information that we know," Crowe tells BST. But she also says there are still plenty of "unknowns" when it comes to the rule, such as what the format for these reports will look like, how in-depth they will be, and, for nations with partnership agreements with the US, what those agreements will look like.

Linedata also added Swift MX messaging, which will allow clients to automate transaction processing from distributors ahead of the industry's move from ISO 15022 to ISO 20022, which is the latest international standard for transmitting transactions and settlement information. While ISO 15022 has yet to be replaced, this will allow Linedata and its clients to stay ahead of the game, Crowe says.

"The reason for this is that a good portion of the business that's on Mshare is in the alternative space, and we're finding that a lot of the Swift messaging in that space is preferring the ISO 20022 standards," she says. "In particular, there's another ongoing project with Swift called the Swift Sharp project, which focuses primarily on messaging for the alternative space, and that is in the ISO 20022 standards, rather than the old 15022 standards for Swift."