Automation in the custody industry might offload some of the donkey work, but it doesn’t look like great news for some jobs.

The Dublin office of Fortis Prime Fund Solutions is spearheading a new automated reconciliation platform that it will eventually migrate across to its 18 offices worldwide.

“We began with the Dublin office as a proof of concept to senior management, to understand the merits of installing such a system,” says Richard Heimans, programme manager for Fortis Prime Fund Solutions.

According to Heimans, the benefits of the new system will be to reduce the cost and risk of spiralling trading volumes, which in turn will allow the firm to identify failures in the system and present them to the user for investigation and resolution.

But as fund admin firms try to cut costs by heading for the holy grail that is straight-through processing, will it mean staff are sacrificed?

Charlie Woolnough, director of business development at Fortis, says yes – and no: “Staffing levels in those areas which lend themselves to automation through improved technology will be reduced over time. These most obvious candidates are areas such as pricing and reconciliation. But, while automation can reduce some of the burden, there is no substitute for experienced employees.”

Gavin Nangle, head of business development at State Street, thinks automation should be good news for anyone working in the fund admin industry: “Our industry has a pretty high staff turnover, and employees are not going to be attracted to firms where their job involves a lot of monotonous grunt work. People want more involved, analytical roles, where they are dealing with good systems to aid their work. The investment in technology is actually conducive to this.”

One of the major gripes of people entering the industry is the repetitive nature of certain parts of the job, agrees Paul Cotter, director of Joslin Rowe in Ireland: “I know how mundane aspects of fund administration work can be, and it’s one of the problems companies have in retaining people, because individuals get bored.”