BNY Mellon Tech Issues Continue to Dog Funds

BNY Mellon Tech Issues Continue to Dog Funds

Bank of New York Mellon said this morning it is still working on restoring a fund accounting system that failed Monday, affecting the ability of dozens of mutual fund and ETF providers from being able to accurately report closing prices.

In a statement posted on its website, the custody bank said though closing prices for some ETFs are now being generated, the reporting for affected mutual funds remains delayed. "We do not have an ETA for completion at this time," the statement read. "We will continue to work with our clients and utilize the agreed upon fair value and other contingency measures until normal processing can resume."

The InvestOne fund accounting platform, provided by Sungard Data Systems, went down on Aug. 22 because of "an unforeseen complication resulting from an operating system change performed by SunGard," the firm said in a statement posted on its website Thursday.

The system change corrupted the support for BNY Mellon’s U.S. fund accounting clients, the firm said, and caused the bank's back-up systems to fail also. Sungard said the failure was not caused by hackers, "nor was it related to the recent turmoil in the equity markets."

The software and technology service provider, which was recently acquired for $9.1 billion by Fidelity National Information Services, stated it is working on getting BNY Mellon's fund accounting system back up, but did not specify when the work would be complete.

'ADVERSE IMPACT'

The statement added an apology from SunGard president and CEO, Russ Fradin: “We at SunGard apologize to BNY Mellon for the adverse impact this unfortunate incident has had on its operations and clients. We take this matter very seriously and truly appreciate the spirit of cooperation from BNY Mellon. We are committed to restoring the trust placed in us by BNY Mellon and all of our valued customers.”

The technical issues have left it unable to price more than 10% of U.S. ETFs and some mutual funds, Bloomberg reports. BNY Mellon told Bloomberg that 20 mutual fund companies and 26 ETF providers have experienced some pricing problems.

Prudential, for instance, said 40 of its more than 60 funds have been affected. Without real-time digital feeds, Prudential is calculating closing prices on its own.

"Since first becoming aware of the issue, Prudential Investments has worked diligently to manually calculate net asset values for certain mutual funds in the absence of electronic data," a Prudential spokeswoman said Thursday. "Once we receive accurate prices, we will update all customer account balances and transactions to reflect the correct prices, as needed."

With four funds affected by the accounting system failure, Federated Investors said "it was calculating NAVs for days subsequent to Monday, Aug. 24, 2015, based on direction provided by Federated’s Valuation Committee," according to a statement posted on its website Thursday.

"We recognize the importance of providing our customers with timely information about their investments," Federated spokesman Ed Costello said. "Until the problem is corrected, Federated has a process in place for calculating net asset values for affected funds, and we make those NAVs available on our website daily by 8 p.m."

Costello added that the firm is recommending that its institutional and intermediary customers reprocess transactions for Monday, Aug. 24 for the affected funds.

'PERIODIC UPDATES'

Voya representatives said that trading activity can continue and the NAV of those transactions will not be affected, though they may be delayed. They did not say how many Voya funds have been affected by the tech issue.

"We have been providing investors and its intermediary partners periodic updates during this situation via the appropriate websites and other means," the Voya spokesperson said Thursday. "It is important to note that all shareholder trades that are in good order will be honored at the NAV on the day the trade is submitted, even if the NAV and the trade are processed at a later date."

A Guggenheim Partners spokesman said that the firm is opting to work with BNY Mellon to report closing prices in real-time rather than on a delayed basis.

"The issues affecting them and the delays with which they provide the end-of-day information, however, do not affect the settlement of purchases and redemptions by authorized participants, as those continue to be settled within the authorized settlement timeframe at the ETF's actual end-of-day price for the date of their transactions," said Guggenheim spokesman Ivy McLemore on Thursday.

Aside from explaining how they were handling the tech issue, most providers had no comment about potential refunds to investors who may have traded on false pricing or any liability concerns as a result.

Read more:

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
Financial planning
MORE FROM FINANCIAL PLANNING