Monitoring systems are fast becoming part of custodians' armoury. Chase Manhattan says it is shortly to launch an electronic compliance monitoring system for custody clients. It will provide signals to warn them when their investment managers have breached any of their guidelines. Stephen Goldman of Chase in London says that a service is already available to alert clients by e-mail, fax and telephone when breaches occur, but the bank is now introducing a desktop system to send warnings automatically.

Recently Citibank purchased Idee,developed by Decalog, a pre-settlement monitoring system aimed at pension and investment funds investing cross-border to replace existing manual services. Aidan Dennis of Citi-bank says adopting Idee as its compliance system enables us to automate existing manual processes". Northern Trust, has recently been winning new business in Europe, particularly in the UK, where its Alert compliance monitoring system has played its part. To keep up the competitive pressure, the bank says it is to launch some enhancements to its system in the next few months."

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