UK – ISIS Asset Management is to outsource a number of its investment administration activities to J P Morgan.

The UK investment company says it has “reached heads of agreement with J P Morgan in respect of a deal to outsource a number of its operational functions”.

For ISIS, the deal will provide the company with a “scaleable” operational platform “to support its ambitious growth objectives.”

ISIS AM’s chief executive, Howard Carter, said ISIS’ strategic goal to become one of the UK’s top five asset managers by 2007, and that the operational platform would therefore need to be “scaleable and flexible enough to respond to future regulatory and market changes”.

Elaborating further, Ken Back, ISIS AM’s chief operating officer said that the deal to outsource some of the back-office duties would allow greater focus on the front-office activities where ISIS adds value – investment performance and investment decision-making.

Back said that ISIS and JP Morgan had negotiated a contract outline which included the outsourcing of the investment administration activities of ISIS – trade processing and settlements and valuations, income and cash forecasting and investment accounting.

He said that over the next three months the contract would be discussed and then formally agreed, giving February 2004 as a target date for signing.

Several partners were considered before the selection of JP Morgan. A key aspect of the deal, says ISIS AM, is that all staff impacted in ISIS’ London and Edinburgh offices will be offered jobs in their current location of employment. Potentially around 70 of ISIS’ 500 staff will have their employment transferred to JP Morgan. There will be no redundancies.

ISIS Asset Management has over 61.9 billion pounds (88.7 billion euros) in assets under management. JP Morgan is one of the world's largest providers of custody and investor related services, with six trillion dollars in assets under custody, of which approximately two trillion dollars are global custody assets.

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