Schroders Investment Management has joined the Clarient Entity Hub, a client data and document management service provided by Clarient Global, a DTCC company co-founded by six major banks.

Schroders will use the service to assist KYC processing for intermediary and institutional investors at its Luxembourg funds hub, and to help counterparties to complete their KYC processing on Schroders' Luxembourg funds. Its adoption brings Clarient’s total user base to more than 100 members.

The Entity Hub provides a single repository for KYC related data and documents which can be used by members at any time, eliminating the costly bi-lateral arrangements commonly made with broker/dealers and easing the costs associated with validating such data.

Supported by the DTCC and a coalition of six major founder banks: Barclays, BNY Mellon, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and State Street; Clarient’s offering reflects a wider industry move towards outsourcing secondary office functions as regulations and costs mount.

"KYC has become more demanding over the past 10 years", said Noel Fessey, Schroders' Global Head of Fund Services. “The list of documents to be obtained from a prospective customer or counterparty is long, and ongoing review obligations means that they must be regularly checked and renewed if necessary. This is challenging for fund promoters, investors, intermediaries and counterparties, and repetitive for many of them.”

The Entity Hub leverages data from DTCC’s Avox Data Services, comprising more than two million validated legal entries, and, according to Clarient, will see expanded DTCC data access over the coming months.

Integrations with DTCC’s various data services such as Omgeo ALERT, the Global Trade Repository and the Global Markets Entity Identifier Utility are planned, as well as a new regulatory data collection functionality.