On 29 November 2013, Korea Securities Depository (KSD) and Clearstream – a Deutsche Börse Group subsidiary - signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in Seoul which creates a framework to support cross-border investment fund distribution by linking KSD’s FundNet and Clearstream’s global funds processing platform Vestima. KSD and Clearstream agreed to implement the system linkage in 2014 and start offering extended services to support cross-border fund distribution (direct and indirect distribution).
Mr. O Moon, Kwon, Senior Managing Director, KSD, said: “The partnership with Clearstream will significantly enhance our cross-border investment fund distribution capabilities. In response to the diverse investment needs of customers we decided to establish a link with Vestima, the largest global fund processing platform which covers more than 120,000 investment funds. With this move we also promote lower costs and higher efficiency for our domestic Korean asset management industry.”
Philippe Seyll, Member of the Executive Board and Head of Investment Funds Services at Clearstream, said the cooperation with KSD and the migration of Korea-domiciled funds to Vestima in 2014 is a key milestone of our Asia funds strategy as it allows international investors to gain easy access to these financial instruments. “We are pleased about the new link to KSD and the Korean investment funds market, a major domicile for investment funds in Asia, where markets are gradually opening up to offshore funds,” he said.
Clearstream is headquartered in Luxembourg which has more than EUR 2,500 billion assets under management in investment funds. Luxembourg is the second-largest funds market in the world after the US. Currently, more than 3,800 collective investment schemes are administered in and distributed from the Grand Duchy.