Depowise and AIFMD Compliance

New AIFM Directive sets high requirements on depositary banks

The new AIFM Directive has made significant changes in the regulatory environment of the alternative fund industry. The role of the depositary has not been changed substantially, but the risks to be monitored by the depositary and potential liability have increased significantly. Core responsibilities of an AIFMD Depositary include

Safekeeping of investor assets,
Cash flow monitoring,
Overseeing compliance with AIFMD and fund specific rules.

Depowise was specially built to support Depositaries in fulfilling those duties.

Main Depowise features for AIFMD depositary banks

Significant Cash-Flow Monitoring

Significant cash-flow monitoring module allows the user to specify fund-based significant cash-flow limits that are checked for daily cash transactions. Depowise will notify the user on the dashboard when a cash-transaction is above the specified limit or has failed for counterparty risk.

Common reasons for cash transactions can be predefined and used to close transactions that do not require any further investigation. This will increase the time you can spend on your other tasks.

Significant cash-flow monitoring module features

Supports the following fund-based configurations:

Significant cash-flow limit
Enabling and disabling checking for every single cash account
White- and blacklisting counterparty accounts

Depowise reports give an overview of checked transactions and show the results of any measures taken.

Workflow engine

A built-in workflow engine supports building dynamic processes and configuring every action on the way. The steps include collecting documents, reviewing transactions, performing manual activities and many others. Every action taken in the workflow will leave behind evidence in the audit trail.

Asset Register

Safekeeping fund assets under AIFMD is complicated and includes high risk if you don’t have a register for investment records, asset, and liabilities. The “look-through” measures introduced with AIMFD require depositary banks to maintain information of assets owned by the SPVs and CISs.

Asset register features

Depowise asset register is designed to help depositary banks keep records of investments together with documentation and the entire history of changes. Our asset register supports the hierarchy of the ownership and helps you visualize the structure of the assets held by the fund. Depowise supports keeping information about different types of assets and lets you define the various types of information required.

Keep records of assets and liabilities with a secure audit trail.
Define and maintain asset-specific information.
Define relations between different assets.
Visualize fund assets and relationships between the assets.

Investors Register

Knowing the list of investors committed to the Fund is crucial for AIFMD depositary oversight responsibilities. Depowise investors register keeps track of the owners of the Fund, their commitments and drawn funds. Upload initial investors register using Excel or add investors manually with their bank account information. Building Fund specific workflows with different checks and decision points for capital call and distribution together with a reconciliation of cash transactions will save You time in operation and provide You secure audit log for compliance.

Modules included in Depowise investors register

Maintaining day to day register of investors data together with their commitments and bank account data
Flexible workflow engine to build processes like capital calls, distribution and dividend payments
Automated cash reconciliations
Reduce the risk of money laundering

Fund Daily Dashboard

The Fund Daily Dashboard brings all necessary data into one view allowing the users to focus only on the most urgent and important matters. Depending on the role of the user, the dashboard provides the status of a single fund or an overall total funds view.

Dashboard features

Reconciliation calendar – shows what reconciliations must be run at what time and by whom
In-progress and scheduled task records – responsible person, status, fund, due date, etc.
Tasks allocations – overview of tasks by category and person responsible
Data sources – overview of data exchange results with different data sources. Files received, files needed etc.
Data validation results – overview of different validation steps, filtering and sorting functionality (enables the user to follow the full lifecycle of every data file and data object)
Notifications, violation warnings.

Central data-HUB and ETL Layer

The Central Data HUB and the ETL layer are the technical core of Depowise. The ETL layer exchanges data with external counterparties, uploads data into the staging tier of the data-HUB and transforms the data into a common standardized structure (i.e. data-HUB production tier).

Only validated data is provisioned into the production tier of the data-HUB to be used in other modules. The staging tier is a base for initial technical and business validation of data and provides a full log of data exchanged between the data source and the Depositary.

Central Data Hub for Funds and Depositary Banks

Central data-HUB and ETL layer features

Data sources and data objects

Depowise supports the import of most machine-readable data formats (Excel, csv, txt, xml, etc.)
Every file exchanged by Depowise is archived and available for auditing purposes.

Data loading and validation

Data quality and integrity are critical for Depowise to provide value and produce reliable results. Depowise executes three data validation steps before data is provisioned into the production tier of data-HUB:

Initial Validation – applied to every file received from source (e.g. is file provided by verified counterparty)
Technical validation – the next set of checks is applied (e.g. is data in the correct format, are checksums correct, is the data structure in accordance with the agreed formatting, etc.)
Business validation – After the data has been successfully converted into the official data-HUB structure, business validation will take place (e.g. is security master data available, data duplicates, are bank holidays skipped for data, cross checks between various data files and/or sources, etc.)

Setup and scope of such validations can vary from fund to fund and from depositary bank to depositary bank.

Trusted by Professionals

Integrations and functionality offered by Depowise have helped us to take the quality of the oversight process to the next level. As Depowise automates data capture and data processing as well as basic controls it enables the control function to focus on areas that actually require attention making the whole oversight process quicker, more efficient and more relevant for us as depositary and also for the client that we supervise.

Undisclosed

Head of Depositary Oversight at Major Scandinavian Bank

East Capital is a multi-national financial asset management company with ever increasing demands on availability of accurate financial data and business intelligence, as such we greatly value the knowledge and long-standing commitment to quality that the people of Depowise bring to their clients.

Lars Sönnerlid

Chief Information Officer at East Capital

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THESE FUNCTIONS SIMPLIFY THE EVERYDAY WORKLOAD OF YOUR DEPOSITARY

Want to see the benefits of using Depowise with your own eyes?

Give us two weeks and we will use the data from one of your funds to create a solution. Interested? Send us a message and we can start now.

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