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First State upgrades portfolio systems

The investment houseÆs Indonesia office adopts a sophisticated IT platform from DSTi.
First State InvestmentsÆ Indonesia unit has gone live with a portfolio administration system from DST International (DSTi). The firm has upgraded to use DSTiÆs HiPortfolio/3 platform for portfolio management; First State has been a DSTi client since 2003.

According to DSTi, the implementation took approximately two months to complete. Within this time period, the software provider gave user training, installation, data conversation and migration to FSI Indonesia. During the time, DSTi also integrated HiPortfolio/3 with FSI IndonesiaÆs own in-house systems and ensured the new system met all Indonesian accounting standards.

FSI Indonesia, a wholly-owned subsidiary AustraliaÆs Colonial First State-Global Assets Management, will use HiPortfolio/3 to handle multiple instruments in an array of currencies, which also includes financial reporting. Additionally, FSI Indonesia will be using the transaction-based platform to generate information such as performance measurement and attribution, portfolio modeling and trading, capital gains tax and income tax collection, and exposure and compliance monitoring.

However, these functions were not the only selling point to FSI Indonesia. According to DSTi, FSI Indonesia moved to the newer version to take advantage of several new features and functions not available on the previous version.

Specifically, the investment manager migrated to HiPortfolio/3 due to its open data base connection (ODBC) data objects function, which gave the firm a market-standard approach to data accessibility and eradicated data inconsistencies on calculations and values. It also chose to upgrade on the back on new and enhanced reporting functions on HiPortfolio/3.

ôHiPortfolio/3 is the favoured platform for managing our portfolios, and our view is that it will become the long-term solution of choice for the industry in Indonesia,ö says Legowo Kusumonegro, president-director at First State in Jakarta. ôThis new version provides improved reporting throughout the business and will assist us in the integration of information flow between all our other software systems.ö

Elsewhere in Indonesia, DSTi has been making significant inroads in the market. It expects to add more clients in the near term, which currently stands at 11, and to add more staff to its Jakarta offices that officially opened in 2005.

ôDSTi has been supporting clients in Indonesia for 10 years and in opening our Jakarta offices, further strengthened our presence in this market,ö says Rhonda Lepsch, DSTiÆs CEO of Asia. ôWe are very excited about the future potential of the Indonesian market, especially given the recent positive economic advances that have been made in the country and our current projections are for approximately 25 staff by the end of 2007.ö

The implementation of HiPortfolio/3 by FSI Indonesia follows the announcement in late November that Dragon Capital in Vietnam had gone live with the same platform in the first phase.
¬ Haymarket Media Limited. All rights reserved.
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