State Street builds out Asia fund admin business
State Street Corporation has set its sights on bulking up its servicing capabilities in collective fund administration across Asia as part of a drive to double non-US revenues by the end of 2014.
It announced yesterday it had re-hired John Sin from BNY Mellon this June to head sales and business development for North Asia (excluding China).
Based in Hong Kong within its global services business, Sin will lead sales strategy in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. His role is to identify and develop new client relationships. It means State Street has effectively split the Asia-wide business development role into two.
Jason Yip was previously responsible for this on a region-wide basis, and earlier this year he relocated to Singapore to cover business development for South Asia as well as securities finance – straddling both the global services and global markets businesses.
Sin notes that State Street is the largest fund admin provider for mutual funds in the US and in the top two in Europe for Luxembourg- and Dublin-domiciled funds.
But while it provides trustee services to the Tracker Fund of Hong Kong, he concedes that the collective fund administration market is not one State Street has really focused on in Asia before.
“It is not a completely new segment to us, but we are not that widely known in terms of providing fund admin services for mutual fund types of instrument in the Hong Kong market,” he tells AsianInvestor. “We are trying to develop our market share.”
The firm is intent on bulking up its regional servicing capabilities, including trustee and transfer agency, first in Hong Kong and Singapore and in a second phase in Taiwan and Korea.
Sin expects to have five to seven people in the trustee team in Hong Kong by the first quarter next year, noting that State Street has been talking to a number of global investment managers with plans to launch collective funds in Hong Kong soon.
“By Q1 next year we will be able to offer a full fund admin solution to those managers launching collective funds in the market,” Sin predicts.
Prior to this post he worked for three years as managing director and head of relationship management and business client solutions for North Asia at BNY Mellon in Hong Kong.
But he started his career at State Street in Hong Kong, working for 13 years in sales and client services roles within its investment manager services team. He has also worked in client services for JP Morgan Chase.
A spokesperson for BNY Mellon confirms that Rex Wong has assumed the position as head of business development for Greater China in an internal move following Sin's departure, adding that the firm would be seeking to expand the team in due course.
BNY Mellon was recently selected as global custodian for the upcoming QDII fund to be launched by joint-venture Manulife Teda Fund Management. It will be called the New Economic Pattern Fund.