Link Fund Solutions partners with Milestone Group for Fund Oversight

By Leandra Monteiro

Milestone Group, the global provider of Oversight and Backup NAV solutions to the investment management industry, has announced that the UK’s largest independent Authorised Corporate Director (ACD), Link Fund Solutions, will adopt its pControl™ Oversight platform.

pControl™ Oversight will allow Link Fund Solutions (LFS) to independently verify NAVs received from its fund administrators and to mitigate a range of risks.

LFS’ decision to subscribe to pControl™ Oversight comes at a time of new operational resilience requirements for financial services businesses in the UK and Ireland, with firms needing to demonstrate compliance with new operational resilience mandates, such as those outlined in the BoE Consultation papers: Operational Resilience of FMIs, by 2025.

pControl™ Oversight is aimed at ensuring investors and the market are not impacted by operational failures at any stage of the value chain and will replace LFS’ existing oversight practices, freeing up valuable time, and provide robust data to underwrite all necessary reporting.

Gordon Thomson, Head of Operational Oversight at Link Fund Solutions, commented, “We’re always keeping an eye out for new technologies that will make the extensive process of monitoring, reporting and data validation more efficient.  Milestone Group provides the ability to validate all the net asset value calculations, with pControl™ Oversight, coordinating all our data into a single view. The added benefit of being able to create our own shadow NAV enhances our operational resiliency supporting the needs of our investors and the market.

“As one of the largest ACDs and ManCos in Europe, we strive to protect investors’ interests and make operations as smooth as possible. pControl™ Oversight will support us in maintaining this.”

The multi-phase rollout will see pControl™ Oversight implemented across LFS’ UK investment vehicles, followed by Ireland and Luxembourg over the coming year, and will support LFS’ plans for international growth, with a platform tailored for multiple jurisdictions.

Geoff Hodge, President of Milestone Group, added, “We are delighted to be working with LFS in this important area as we see ManCos becoming more sophisticated in the oversight of investment companies as their responsibilities become increasingly complex and time-consuming in satisfying regulatory and market expectations across jurisdictions.”