(Pictured: Mark Hallett) 

The SS&C Technologies takeover of DST Global Solutions is likely to see an acceleration in outsourcing by fund managers who will be able to have their investment accounting and asset servicing systems, such as DST’s HiPortfolio, hosted by the software company. The takeover, announced last week, does not include the rapidly growing wealth management system, DST Bluedoor.

Rhys Octigan, who headed up DST Global Solutions business development for Australia and New Zealand, now of SS&C Technologies (HiPortfolio & Anova), said SS&C was very strong in hosting services and this presented a “real opportunity” for the former DST Global Solutions, which had already commenced trading as SS&C Technologies.

Mark Hallett, now global head of operations and support for SS&C Technologies (HiPortfolio & Anova), who spends about one week per month in Australia, said that the firm had already engaged with one of its biggest clients in Europe to fully host its HiPortfolio environment.  This was a significant new service that would be able to be delivered by SS& C Technologies’ world-class data centres, he said. Before the takeover, DST Global Solutions would have had to look for a technology partner to enable its new hosting and SaaS (software as a service) offerings.

DST Global Solutions, for which SS&C has paid US$95 million in cash, was the London-based subsidiary of the diversified US DST Systems which specialized in fund management and wealth management solutions. DST Global Solutions had a strong Australian connection through the history of development for its HiPortfolio investment  accounting and asset servicing system, which has been the dominant service of its type for many years.

HiPort, as it is known, was a start-up investment systems company in Melbourne in the mid-1980s, which was acquired by DST in 1995. Both Hallett and Octigan had worked with HiPortfolio in the pre-DST days as well. About 100 of its 350 staff are based in Australia, with the rest mainly in EMEA and Asia, where recent new business has been strong.

SS&C, on the other hand, is a global company which is dominant in North America and Canada, rather than Europe and Asia Pacific. It has about 20 people in its Sydney office. SS&C, however, has about 6,900 clients around the world, compared with DST Global Solutions’ 170. SS&C’s product and service suite enable its clients to administer around USD$26 trillion of assets under management.

SS&C also has about 50 products which the former DST Global Solutions management will be studying for appropriate synergies in its global  market. Apart from HiPort, DST Global Solution’s other main product here has been Anova, a data management and analytics platform.

Bluedoor, which was acquired by DST several years ago, is a Melbourne-based wealth management systems company, whose offering covers administration registry, imaging and workflow, character recognition, reporting and other functions. It also expanded in Europe under DST ownership. It developed, for instance, a new application specifically for the Superstream regulations. DST Bluedoor effectively now becomes DST Australia. Ownership of HiTrust also remains with DST.

In a statement, Bill Stone, SS&C’s chairman and chief executive, said: “We view EMEA and Asia Pacific as strategic geographies and this acquisition provides the talent, technology and client base to accelerate growth.”