ACOLIN
Opening the door to Europe’s funds market
In an industry where access to cross-border markets is ever more critical, ACOLIN assists fund managers in registering and distributing their fund products in Switzerland and throughout the EU.
Independent service provider
Based in Switzerland but with offices around all of Europe, ACOLIN is the only independent international cross-border fund distribution service provider and with its experience in regulatory and legal fields, fund distribution and marketing, supports fund managers in offering their products throughout markets across the continent. ACOLIN, headquartered in Zurich, with subsidiaries in London, Dublin, Luxembourg, Madrid and Konstanz, offers legal representation services in Switzerland to firms targeting the country’s institutional or retail markets, helping to manage relationships with the authorities, distribution partners and investors. The company’s clients include specialist fund managers and financial services groups from Europe and beyond, with products ranging from classical retail equity and fixed-income vehicles to hedge fund managers, infrastructure and real estate specialists as well as the asset management arms of private banks.
Access to distribution in Switzerland
Critical areas include the fund authorisation process, preparing the documents for submission to the financial authority FINMA, maintaining authorisation on an ongoing basis and handling distribution arrangements. Establishing and managing distribution channels can be a costly and time-consuming burden, even for fund firms that are part of major international financial services groups, and the access certain distribution platforms offer to investors can be limited or expensive, or both. ACOLIN offers an established distribution network that offers fund managers rapid availability of their products and lowers entry barriers for new markets. Included in ACOLIN’s Distribution-Network Management (DNM) is the data-, document- and commission management, preventing double payments of commission payments, taking on the distribution of the required regulatory documents and reducing the data management down to only one single interface.
Global registration and investor communication
As a complement to the distribution support, ACOLIN facilitates the registration of clients’ UCITS and AIF funds in various international markets, not only throughout the EU but also in Liechtenstein, Norway, Chile, Peru Singapore, Hong Kong, Israel and Turkey to name a few. ACOLIN also runs and manages ACOLIN connect, a B2B information and communications platform offering its clients, fund managers, a place to communicate directly with professional investors by giving its clients a space to post news, multimedia content and detailed fund information. In order to optimally adjust its corporate structure to the rapidly changing regulatory environment for cross-border fund distribution in Europe, ACOLIN founded ACOLIN Europe GmbH in 2014 and thus relocated its EU headquarters from Luxembourg to Germany. The benefits for fund managers in need of assistance for distributing their products throughout the continent are greater than ever.