Billing Management System (BMS) for Asset Managers

Billing Management made easy for Asset Managers

Hexaware's Billing Management System (BMS^TM) helps Asset managers seamlessly manage the billing needs of their institutional and private clients.

Solution Overview

BMS^TM allows obtaining basic account and account balance information from heterogeneous underlying portfolio accounting systems. BMS provides:
Maintenance of billing related information and all the processing required to perform accruals, calculate invoices, review and release invoices.
Creation of extracts for Accounting and AUM type of systems.

Account Balances

BMS^TM uploads new account information on a daily basis. All account balances are month-end balances.

• Account balances for any given month can be uploaded many times - initially at the month-end itself, and subsequently if there are any changes to the balance.
• BMS^TM also provides uploading balances such as "provisional balances", and then subsequently uploading a "final" balance that has been reviewed and approved.

Inbuilt billing rules

Once the basic account information has been uploaded to the BMS, additional billing parameters can be entered directly into BMS in the form of billing rules.

• These rules define the calculation, billing frequency, in-advance or in-arrears billing, asset bases, minimum/maximum billing limits, discounts, and various other parameters that define billing requirements.
• BMS also provides functionalities to manage both the monthly accruals process as well as the billing process.
• BMS also enables auto generation and release of invoices at scheduled periods.

Numerous work-flow notifications can be used to facilitate operations.

KEY FEATURES

Hierarchial Model

BMS supports definition of an ACCOUNT, PORTFOLIO, PORTFOLIO-SEGMENT, CUSIP AND TAX-LOT. Balances are stored at the portfolio-segment level.
Lower level balances at the CUSIP or TAX-LOT level are only uploaded if they are needed for billing calculations.
Billing rules can be defined at the client, account, or the portfolio level. The rules apply to all entities that roll up to that level.

FLEXIBLE FEE DEFINITION

BMS allows you to define any number of rules for an account, and therefore, any number of fee types for an account.
Each rule can specify it's own calculation and billing frequency, asset basis, minimum/maximums, discounts, and so on.
Each fee can be charged to the clients in multiple ways such as direct deduct, hard-copy invoice, etc. And each fee can be presented in a separate invoice, or multiple fees may be combined into one invoice for presentment to the customer.
Any number of formats can be defined for an invoice and BMS can be configured to automatically send additional copies of invoices to other addresses.

ACCOUNT AGGREGATION

BMS supports definition of a RELATIONSHIP that links multiple accounts. Billing rules can be defined at the relationsship level. BMS can aggregate assets across accounts for the purposes of determining appropriate billing rates.
This allows customers whether institutional or private, to pool their assets to obtain a more beneficial billing rate.

BILLING SEGMENTS

BMS facilitates segment wise upload of portfolio balances. Hence, flexible options such as excluding CASH from the billable assets or applying certain functions only to the EQUITIES portion of the portfolio are possible.

CASH FLOWS

BMS allows you to upload cash flow information from the underlying portfolio accounting system. Portfolios can be marked to reflect the impact of these cash flows on the invoice in multiple ways.
An account can be marked to either 'always adjust' for cash flows to 'never adjust' for cash flows or to 'selectively adjust' only if cash flows exceed a definited threshold.
The concerned account owner can be notified of system adjustments for review and approval prior to release of the invoice.

CUSTODIAL BALANCES

BMS allows for data entry of account balances as reported by the custodian. The account can be set up to calculate bills based on these balances rather than on the balances uploaded from the portfolio accounting system.

AUDIT AND SECURITY

BMS provides a flexible set of users and groups and allows different access levels to each group for all functions provided. In addition, an audit trail is maintained of all activities including any adjustments done to billing parameters or invoices for audit control purposes.