The Luxembourg-based fund provider Pictet & Cie (Europe), part of the Swiss private bank, has signed an agreement to make its funds available via Calastone, the cross-border provider of transaction network for mutual fund.

Pictet will now benefit from Calastone’s list of global fund distributors and aggregators, as well as from cross-border trading, global reach and an easily scaleable capacity, the firms said in a statement.

Calastone enables providers to offer their open architecture funds to investors irrespective of domicile or preferred messaging protocol. This is believed to reduce costs, gain visibility and keep control of their order flow. There is no membership fees or technology expenditure for the providers that use Calastone.

“When we launched 18 months ago, we initially focused on the domestic UK market, ever mindful of the demands of our domestic participants to access the international fund community” said Kevin Lee, managing director and joint-founder of Calastone.

“Luxembourg is a key market for us. The mutual fund community has asked us to help them automate their trade, execution and settlement flow, and, by connecting to Calastone, remove the dependency on fax, now widely recognised as a legacy inefficiency.”

“Our full settlement service is changing the mutual funds landscape enabling all firms to benefit from STP. It is our ultimate aim to offer the entire mutual funds industry complete front to back STP regardless of participants' incumbent technology or connectivity preference."

Calastone, established in March 2007, enables the whole mutual fund market to go fully electronic. The Calastone Transaction Network allows participants to send and receive instructions in any way they prefer, whatever their messaging protocol. Also participants can track their trades and manage exceptions on a real-time electronic basis throughout the transaction lifecycle, the firm said.