This category was easy to judge in the past, as the Brown Brothers Harriman custody site had been so much better than the competition. For 2002, however, it was different.
Several firms have boosted the quality of their sites, so while BBH still has an excellent online offering, others have caught up, and JPMorgan wins this year.
The bank’s Treasury and Securities Services Online (T&SS) portal offers cash management, trust and custody services. The custody site is part of JPMorgan Investor Services and provides extremely extensive reporting, news and reference tools. It has 2,000 users.
There are three different reporting categories on the site. Views reporting provides, for example, reports on custody transactions, custody holdings, accounting transactions, accounting holdings, corporate actions, daily cash and securities lending.
The site also offers performance reporting, including portfolio comparison, attribution and risk analysis. The third type of reporting includes a variety of compliance reporting tools. These reports are downloadable and the process can be automated.
One particular highlight in the compliance section is the breach register tool, which enables the user to easily manage the reconciliation of violations on the exceptions report. The site also enables users to obtain a consolidated snapshot of compliance reporting across its agent banks, as information from other banks can be uploaded to the system.
In addition to such extensive reporting, the site offers news and reference services. It also offers what the bank calls reverse association. This enables customers to select news articles that will bring up a list of all the funds affected by that news. Despite this range of information, the site is easy to navigate.
The site also offers what the bank calls TradeSTARR. This is a tool for managing counter-party risk and failed trade costs, and for ranking broker performance. The site enables customers to obtain a breakdown of trader activity within a specific timeframe. This includes data such as the number of trades, the size, number of failed trades and who executed the trade. Compliance officers can utilize this information to carry out trader performance reviews.
