The Acupay Security Lifecycle Platform
Acupay’s mission is to facilitate the securities lifecycle for issuers, investors, and all involved parties. This is true whether Acupay is consulting with issuers on pre-issuance, assisting with corporate action events, providing platforms that enable tax relief and certification, or assisting beneficial owners with tax reclaims. This facilitation was initially achieved through a variety of separate applications including the Tax Processing Services (TPS) system, the Acupay System, Bondcom, and the Acupay Real-Time System, all of which were purpose-built at different times over the past 18 years.
In 2019, armed with this industry experience, Acupay set out a long-term vision for a tax relief ecosystem. This ecosystem would bring together all market participants and stakeholders into a common technology framework. Since then, we have been building solutions that embrace that 2019 vision, while aiming to relieve common financial industry headaches in the space of post-trade and withholding tax services. The products developed are our comprehensive documentation management application, World Tax Forms (WTF), and our market data administration application for treaty rates and documentation requirements, called the Market Data Tool (MDT).
We expect that integrating the WTF and MDT functionality with our existing applications into a single platform to be transformative for our services, and for the industry. It creates a powerful connected ecosystem for users, including CSDs, tax authorities, banks, asset managers, and investors. By providing a coherent, flexible, and easy-to-use solution that shares documents, data, and connectivity, we can offer increased productivity giving users access to multiple functionalities through one platform.
There are five elements of the Acupay platform approach:
Integration and Interoperability: Replacing individual applications with an integrated framework, where events and data in one area of the security lifecycle means more information and opportunities in another.
Connectivity: Building an ecosystem that allows full connectivity through APIs, file sharing, and direct connection with third parties, such as issuers, clearing systems and their participants, Swift, market data providers, and tax authorities.
Incorporate gained knowledge: Since the creation of our original applications, Acupay has gained an amazing amount of industry and tax experience. This will be captured in the new platform to enhance existing and future services provided to our community.
New functionality: In addition to including our industry experience, we will introduce new functionality, such as our WTF and MDT products, through the use of new technology and our service-based approach.
Accommodate industry changes: Our platform and its features will be prepared for industry changes, such as those from the new EU proposed rules on “fair and simple taxation” directive. While our current solutions already address many points mentioned in the proposed rules, and we will continue monitoring industry and market changes to ensure our platform is ready to lead the industry by addressing current and future needs.
Acupay’s objective with this approach is to offer the best experience and value for most of the participants involved in the lifecycle of securities and provide a responsive platform that is ready to address the needs of our clients, users, and the industry, achieving our mission of reducing friction in cross-border investing and maximizing returns.
For further information, please contact the Product Management and Client Engagement Team at product@acupay.com.