Castine Consulting and ONEaccess, a Visible Alpha company, are teaming up to provide enhanced RPA (research payment account) solutions to asset managers and hedge funds.
Castine has operated in the commission management space for 20 years and is combining its RPA Centre suite of due diligence and commission management modules with ONEaccess’ research consumption data, providing buy-side firms with an end-to-end solution for RPAs.
With greater transparency around commission payments for research, the combined solution offers buy-side firms of all sizes the ability to comply with MiFID II’s budgeting requirements, heightened due diligence, trade management and research payments, with a wide variety of research valuation approaches.
Currently, many asset managers operate commission sharing agreements (CSAs), and RPAs are designed to enhance the controls around commission spend.
Castine’s RPA Centre solution includes a database containing a built-in repository of completed due diligence questionnaires from over 500 research providers allowing buy-side firms to quickly onboard new brokers and research providers, saving significant time and resources.
Castine’s compliance group manages the entire process of collecting new questionnaires and updating existing ones. This information, when coupled with Castine’s license, renewal, and payment management, works with ONEaccess’ research consumption data to give an asset manager’s broker liaison and research valuation participants a more complete view of their relationships with brokers and third-party research providers.
“The combination of our strengths in tracking and valuing interactions from more than 200 research providers and Castine’s flexibility in budgeting and actioning research payments offer our mutual clients another option for implementing their MiFID II strategy,” says Mike Stepanovich (pictured), CEO of ONEaccess.
RPA Centre’s modularized approach allows buy-side firms to leverage their own valuation systems, ONEaccess’ Broker Vote, or Castine’s multi-tiered, multi-dimensional valuation system.
Trade reconciliation may be performed by RPA Centre, outsourced to Castine, or to a third-party.
“We’re very sensitive to the fact that MiFID II is forcing asset managers to contend with a highly complex set of new requirements that are likely to evolve and mature over the next several years. Therefore, we designed RPA Centre as a highly flexible toolset to ensure our clients will keep pace with MiFID II’s evolution,” says Robin Hodgkins, president of Castine.
