The SDIA Margin Lending Advisory Group has been working on a number of initiatives since our first meeting in February.

Steven Pearce MSDIA (CBA), Andrew Neudegg (CBA) and Bronwyn Snee MSDIA (ANZ) have agreed to chair a Panel Discussion to discuss 'Automation of Funds Management Execution and Processing' at the SDIA Conference in May. We are seeking interest from the Funds Management industry (via IFSA) to provide a representative to participate in this forum. The Panel is also seeking feedback from Margin Lenders and Fund Managers regarding the relevant risk and cost issues facing our industry from the manual process around execution and settlement of managed funds transactions.

Please forward issues for discussion to the Margin Lending Advisory group via info@sdia.org.au, or contact Andrew, Bronwyn or Steven directly.

We also recently attended a forum held by SDIA, on Short Selling. The meeting was well attended with representatives from ASIC, SDIA, Retail and Institutional Brokers, Custodians, Prime Brokers and Margin Lenders.

The Advisory Group is also working with ASX to remove the risk from loan refinancing by utilising Chess messages to facilitate these transactions.  Andrew Neudegg and Bronwyn Snee have released an issues paper and are currently liaising with ASX on providing Chess based solutions.