Reshaping the Asset Management Industry by commercialising the first digital solution to automate preparation of legal agreements that will increase the growth of registered funds on global markets.

Project Information

Fundsphere Terms FST

Grant agreement ID: 717953

DOI

10.3030/717953

Project closed

EC signature date 22 February 2016

Start date 1 March 2016

End date 31 May 2016

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

Metrosoft Polska
Poland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Fundsphere Terms FST (Reshaping the Asset Management Industry by commercialising the first digital solution to automate preparation of legal agreements that will increase the growth of registered funds on global markets.)

Reporting period: 2016-03-01 to 2016-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The continued use of a paper-based Contract Lifecycle Process in the Asset Management Industry creates needless inefficiencies, errors, risk and limitations. Asset Managers using state-of-the-art spreadsheets and document assembly tools find their paper chaos transformed into even bigger digital chaos without meaningful improvement of current methods. Furthermore, recent financial regulations (MiFID II in EU, RDR in UK, Dodd-Frank Act in USA) reinforce the need for disruptive technologies to stay competitive in the new investor environment.
Metrosoft is set to revolutionize the way the agreements are created and managed in the Asset Management Industry. Fundsphere Terms is a native digital platform that creates, manages and exchanges legal agreements covering Terms of Business between the Sell Side and the Buy Side in a structured database solution. The benefits of such dematerialisation have been demonstrated in the successfully finalised Phase 1 Feasibility Study: Fundsphere Terms disrupts current contract creation by simplifying the workflow and speeding up the process from months to weeks and in the case of amendments from weeks to a single day.
The need for Fundsphere Terms was confirmed by key finance firms during the two biggest sectorial conferences in Luxembourg and Hong Kong (ALFI, ITAS) and Key Opinion Leaders who are strong supporters of industry dematerialisation. To fully exploit this EU-based technology, we will drive growth through B2B model and target the top 400 Assets Manager decision-makers and industry influencers. Later growth will be by “snowball effect” (counterparties of Assets Managers). By bringing Fundsphere Terms into the rapidly growing market we estimate to attract min. ≥ 25% of the global Asset Managers, which means volume of approx. +/-20 customers annually, with an estimated revenue €17.4mln after 5 years.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The following tasks have been included in our feasibility study:

1. Technical and technological feasibility study
2. Market and commercial feasibility study
3. IPR and freedom to operate analysis

Main results achieved:

Technological feasibility with detailed work plan for a Phase 2
Missing capacity and technical partner search (subcontractor): we defined the tasks to cover Metrosoft missing competences and we described the award procedure to be followed to select a subcontractor.
Credibility with Industry Community – Key Opinion Leaders and Influencers from Fund Industry: Industry stakeholder reaction on FSTerms product was very positive, some of them expressed opinion on its innovativeness
Communication activities between Nov´15 and Jun´16: We communicated FSTerms first output and spoke with industry during important sector events. We have published a press release and a wide interest was received.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The feasibility analysis carried out during this phase 1 has demonstrate the viability of the technology to reach the market and it has been confirmed by the several letters of interest signed by possible customers and collaborators for the pilot trials to be performed in the Phase 2 project execution.

Our project will reshape the Asset Management Industry by commercialising the first digital solution “Fundsphere Terms“ to automate preparation of legal agreements that will increase the growth of registered funds on global markets.

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