The Luxembourg Stock Exchange have now announced its cooperation with Altus on the development of the market infrastructure for European investment funds.

The Luxembourg Stock Exchange is creating a market infrastructure, which will provide services to substantially support, facilitate and standardize the cross-border distribution of funds.

The initial scope of services will focus on transaction management and, Information and Reporting services, leveraging on Finesti experience and leadership. The first step will be to cover Luxembourg and then other cross-border UCITS funds domiciled in various countries.

This infrastructure will serve the market as a user-owned and user-governed market utility. The objective is to “Go live”, for phase 1, in quarter 3 2013 with the first users connected to the platform. This first step will be followed by other developments such as the trade settlement.

Dominique Valschaerts, member of the executive committee of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, said: “We are very pleased that Altus will be cooperating with us on this important project. Altus will be able to bring all their experience of the development of software solutions towards the Fund Industry. Industry players are supporting the initiative as they recognised the need for such an infrastructure in the current economic and regulatory context that is putting a real cost pressure. The FMI will propose for the first time in Europe an innovative utility model with costs shared by participants bringing value added services facilitating cross border distribution and low transaction costs”.

Ben Cocks, Products Director at Altus said: “We are delighted to be partnering with the Luxemburg Stock Exchange on this prestigious programme.  Using open standards to create a more efficient funds industry is at the core of what we do at Altus and we wholeheartedly support Bourse de Luxemburg’s vision of transforming cross-border funds distribution.”

The fund market infrastructure initiative is backed by a consultation group of major international participants operating in Luxembourg, Europe’s largest investment fund centre, and include leading transfer agents and distributors involved in cross-border fund distribution.