Custodian Bank Reviews

Thomas Murray's core activities have historically involved assisting institutional investors to evaluate and select custodian banks. Committed to supporting investors, Thomas Murray developed and utilises SupplierSelect, an online RFP tool, which is recognised as significantly more effective and streamlined than any other market offering. Thomas Murray's unique methodologies and comprehensive knowledge of custody have gathered an impressive list of institutional clients. Thomas Murray has reviewed €3.1 trillion of assets, providing institutional investors with a unique and powerful service. The Thomas Murray custodian review process consists of four phases:

• Assessment - Understanding current and future client requirements and comparing those with current service provision and best market practice. This will result in a recommendation to either refine existing arrangements or undertake a competitive bid process.
• Evaluation - If a competitive bid process is chosen, we will structure a Request for Proposal (RFP), provide it to a recommended long list of potential providers and evaluate the responses. Once a short list of providers is agreed, the critical stage consists of using a series of structured proprietary methodologies to arrive at a potential recommended service provider.
• Appointment - The next stage is the detailed negotiation and agreement of both the service levels and legal terms of the new relationship. It is imperative that this is concluded before a final decision is announced. A lack of clarity and insufficient level of detail in service agreements can negate much of the value of the work undertaken in earlier stages.
• Custodian Monitoring - Establishing a detailed service level agreement is the relatively easy first step. The challenge is then to monitor actual performance against what was committed and expected. It is also important to have the tools to be able to identify any on-going problems and ways of resolving them. As a consequence we have developed a new service which allows an objective and quantitative assessment of your custodian's performance: Custodian Monitoring.

If you would like to discuss how we may be able to assist you or find out more about our capabilities please contact Simon Thomas or by phone on +44 (0)20 7830 8300