The biggest story for asset servicing in 2020 is that of Covid-19 locking investors, asset managers, and portfolio managers in their homes and forcing them to go online to continue investing, trading, and managing their portfolios.

As a result, they had to rely heavily on their asset service providers, particularly the sub-custodians, domestic custodians, and fund administrators, to provide them with the online access, digital tools, and technology solutions to enable them to efficiently manage all these online processes and ensure proper risk management despite the pandemic.

In the institutional investor space, directors and shareholders who had to attend annual general meetings (AGMs) and general meetings (GMs) but are also forced to stay at home had to resort to e-proxy solutions to ensure their virtual attendance.

In the retail investment space, where some asset service providers had been futilely pushing some of their reluctant clients to move their transactions online for years prior to the pandemic, Covid-19 was a blessing in disguise.

The work-from-home (WFH) environment pushed even reluctant investors to go online, resulting in huge increases in the volume of online trading in many of the domestic markets. The cumulative turnover of the region’s 19 major stock exchanges almost doubled from US$2.7 trillion in January 2020 to US$5.5 trillion in January 2021, according to the World Federation of Exchanges.

The huge increase in volume, in turn, fuelled the need for a corresponding increase in fund administration and collateral services.

While many of the leading asset service providers have been building up their online and digital capabilities for many years, it has never been tested on such a massive scale as during the pandemic. The remarkable thing is they were also able to service their WFH clients while working from home themselves.

The year also saw numerous changes in service providers in an industry that has traditionally been conservative when it comes to shifting service alliances with some multi-market RFPs being awarded. This has resulted in an increasingly competitive market with players grabbing market share away from each other.

It is in this context that we announce the winners of the Best in Asset Servicing Awards 2021 for the Asean region and Australia.

In addition to submissions and pitch meetings, The Asset board of editors also engaged with clients of the participants, securing valuable feedback in the form of client calls and our in-house Asset Servicing Survey.

For more details, please subscribe to our magazine.

For a full list of winners, please click here.