BBH Unveils First-of-its-Kind Digital Account Opening Process to Streamline Investor Onboarding

March 25, 2024
  • Investor Services
New API will replace manual processes and streamline communications to open investor accounts. BBH partnered with Allfunds as the first adopter of the solution and expects many more to follow.

Boston, MA, March 25, 2024 – Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (BBH) today announces the successful automation of account openings with Allfunds, a leading B2B WealthTech platform for the fund management industry. This unique digital and automated solution from BBH creates a standardized electronic messaging system to facilitate the end-to-end, straight-through processing API account opening solution, resulting in a much faster account opening time. By digitizing this process, users of the platform will experience a more efficient, quicker time to market and higher quality investor experience when opening accounts.

“BBH is transforming one of the least digital aspects of our industry into a technology enabled, end-to-end solution and with that, improving the investor experience,” said Manuel Dienhart, Transfer Agency Product Executive and Global Head of TA, BBH. “BBH has developed this API to enable investors to access funds much faster. Allfunds was a great partner to work with and our aligned vision was instrumental in bringing this solution successfully to life. We have started conversations already to roll this out more broadly, as we believe this has the potential to become an industry standard for Platforms and Banks opening investor accounts with us.”

While other areas of the fund servicing industry have adopted paperless processes, the domain of the transfer agency across the industry has historically lagged behind, and today still involves heavy utilization of fax instructions, electronic and physical documents and manual data entry – resulting in thousands of faxes being sent and received each month. By completely digitizing and automating the process, faxes will be eliminated promoting a straight through automation process (STP) to open investor accounts.

Benefits of the new solution include:

  • Industry Standardization: By establishing a standardized information messaging process related to account opening, adoption for distributors/investors is straight-forward, with complete industry standardization being a long-term goal.
  • Faster Time to Account Opening: By removing the need for faxes and instead utilizing a data-driven process, accounts can be opened more efficiently, enabling investors to trade on new accounts quicker, and ultimately leading to fund managers receiving subscriptions faster.
  • Risk Reduction: By eliminating the need for manual input and email traffic through the standardized messaging protocol, no human intervention is required, instead relying on the controls and added transparency through a codified set of standards.

“Allfunds and BBH share the duty of transforming the account opening processes for the benefit of both investors and fund companies,” said Juan Carlos Gallego, Chief Transformation Officer, Allfunds. “Allfunds is immensely proud to play a primary role in this initiative, steadfast in our determination to continue enhancing the efficiency of the fund industry.”

BBH is able to bring this to the industry thanks to a history of multi-year investments including cutting edge investor onboarding technology, IOBR. IOBR is a global, digitized rules-engine and workflow management tool created for fund investor onboarding and account life cycle. It provides the digital foundation for a transparent, modern, efficient and scalable TA service. Leveraging this flexible technology, the new STP account opening process supports API connectivity with a standard JSON messaging format as a base.

About Brown Brothers Harriman

BBH is a privately held financial institution that has been a thought leader and solutions provider for over 200 years. The firm serves individuals, families, businesses and institutions in its three business lines: Private Banking, Investment Management, and Investor Services. BBH’s culture of accountability fosters deep and lasting relationships built on commitment, adaptability, and trust. The company is independent, selective, and specialized by design.

BBH’s Investor Services business provides cross-border custody, accounting, administration, execution, and technology services to many of the world’s leading asset managers and financial institutions.

BBH operates its global business out of eighteen offices located in New York, Boston, Beijing, Charlotte, Chicago, Dublin, Grand Cayman, Houston, Hong Kong, Jersey City, Kraków, London, Luxembourg, Nashville, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Wilmington and Zürich. For more information, please visit www.bbh.com.


Contacts for BBH:

Prosek Partners
Pro-bbh@prosek.com
Boston: +1 (857) 702 2114
London: +44 (20) 3890 9193

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