The wealth management house has adopted a platform designed to speed up stock transfers.

Investec Wealth & Investment, part of UK/South Africa-listed Investec, has gone live with a recently-launched transfer service run by Calastone, the global funds transaction network.

The wealth manager joins firms such as UK-listed Rathbones, which has adopted the Calastone Transfer Service, which is designed to automate stock transfers. Calastone says businesses need to be able to automate transfer of assets, a process intensified by requirements on faster transfers in the UK’s Retail Distribution Review programme of reforms.

“A key goal for us is to undertake and complete transfers for the majority of cases within a day, thus driving valuable operational and cost efficiencies,” Ann Mosey, head of settlements, Investec Wealth & Investment, said.

Among other major clients that it has signed up, Calastone has worked with National Bank of Abu Dhabi Global Asset Management; it has also spoken to this news service's sister publication, WealthBriefingAsia, about the potential size and growth of a new regime of fund "passports" in the Asia-Pacific region (see here).

Recent data suggest there is ever-increasing automation - and speed - of order processing in the fund management sector in which Calestone operates, at least in some regions. According to figures from the  European Fund and Asset Management Association, in cooperation with SWIFT, the automation rate in the fund industry increased to 83.5 per cent in the second quarter of 2015 from 82.6 per cent in Q4 2014.