Maitland reaches R500 billion in assets under administration

Maitland director Dale Lippstreu

Maitland Fund Services CEO Veit Schuhen

Specialist provider of administration services to the asset management industry Maitland today announced that the assets it administers have exceeded R500 billion for the first time. Maitland administers investment portfolios and collective investment schemes on behalf of 48 domestic and 32 international clients and was recently ranked the third fastest growing hedge fund administrator globally in an international industry survey by Hedgefund.net. Assets under administration grew by R151 billion in the past year and have doubled in the past three years.

According to Maitland Fund Services CEO Veit Schuhen the success of the business can be attributed to its unique service model which offers clients a comprehensive outsource solution. “We look to becoming a strategic business partner of our clients rather than just a commodity service provider. This is a very demanding role which requires state of the art systems and skills levels that clients would like to have in their own businesses.” According to Schuhen this is where South Africa is well placed to compete with other offshoring administration centres. While other popular centres such as India are very cost competitive, South Africa’s advantage lies in the availability of good skills at a competitive cost.

Maitland took part in a recent conference organised by the Department of Trade & Industry in London where Maitland director Dale Lippstreu suggested that the “decoupling” of jurisdiction and administration creates great opportunities for South African service providers. Escalating costs driven by capacity constraints in established centres such as Luxembourg and Dublin together with the increasing complexity of systems are creating an imperative to relocate operations to lower cost centres.

Lippstreu says there is increasing awareness and acceptance of South Africa as a fund servicing centre but a lot can be done to accelerate the process. “South Africa should be aiming for a quality regulatory environment which is aligned with international best practice and which supports rules and structures which are familiar to international investors. If this were in place I have little doubt that South Africa could not only be the gateway to Africa but also an international financial servicing centre. Should anyone doubt the possibilities one need only look to Mauritius which has rapidly grown its financial services sector with extremely limited resources from start-up to 40% of GDP,” he said.

The hedgefund.net survey can be read at http://www.hedgefund.net/reports/Admin_Survey/q409_fast.htm