Dreyfus Joins the Managed Accounts Service

Kevin Miller

Dreyfus Investments, the industry’s 14th largest provider of managed accounts, has joined the Managed Accounts Service (MAS), a centralized platform for the industry designed to streamline communications associated with opening and maintaining managed accounts. MAS is an offering of DTCC Solutions LLC, a subsidiary of DTCC. Dreyfus Investments is a division of MBSC Securities Corporation, which is a subsidiary of The Dreyfus Corporation.

MAS will, for the first time, provide a single communications network and standard set of messages for a now-fragmented industry. Dreyfus is the latest in a growing list of firms actively working in the MAS participant test environment in advance of the service launch, scheduled for the near future.

“Automating and standardizing the data flow for these transactions will help our clients, reducing traderelated costs and risk and stimulating growth,” said Kevin Miller, senior vice president of Dreyfus Investments. “We are pleased to partner with DTCC on this important initiative.”

The Dreyfus Corporation, part of BNY Mellon Asset Management, currently manages $200 billion in mutual funds, separately managed accounts and institutional portfolios.

Managed account growth

At present, seven investment manager firms are working in the MAS test environment, along with four outsourcers and nine vendors. Interest in the new service has accelerated following a June conference on managed account solutions sponsored by DTCC and the Money Management Institute (MMI).

The latest MMI report states that separately managed account assets under management (AUM) reached $808 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2007. Total managed account AUM for the same period reached $1.5 trillion; this includes SMAs, unified managed accounts and dual-contract and multi-disciplined portfolios.

MAS will create a more efficient and secure process for sharing data required to open and support managed accounts. Currently, most messages are transmitted from the managed account sponsor to asset managers that are handpicked by the sponsor to invest and manage an investor’s funds. Depending on the size and complexity of an investor’s account, many asset managers can be communicating back and forth with the sponsor on a single account.

“Multiply that activity by thousands of accounts, and the complexities of the communication between managers and sponsors can be a real burden,” said Ann Bergin, DTCC managing director and general manager, Wealth Management Services. “That’s the value of one central communications platform. We transform a complex web of communications into one streamlined process through a single gateway. The resulting efficiencies reduce operational costs and risk, and allow managers to better serve the investor client.”