Boosting Payments Efficiency in Fund Management: Kartesia Funds implements FinologeeLYNKS to optimise payment processing, reporting & reconciliation across bank accounts
Building on the success of the LYNKS implementation by Kartesia’s management company, Kartesia Funds has decided to also use the Finologee platform for banks and accounts management. As a leading European leveraged loan investor managing more than EUR 5 billion in assets, Kartesia focuses on small and medium-sized companies and has a proven track record of investing in over 230 European firms.
The implementation of the LYNKS platform targets to increase the efficiency of the fund management payments processes of Kartesia’s funds on the one hand and special purpose vehicles teams on the other hand, as they seek in particular to optimise their reporting and reconciliation processes for incoming payments.
The Kartesia Funds finance team has partnered with Alter Domus and Yooz to process payments and invoices for eight banks. Yooz is used for settling invoices with suppliers, while Alter Domus is responsible for preparing various business-related transactions such as investments and distributions to partners. These transactions are processed through several banking interfaces, including both multiline and online banking systems of banks that do not have Multiline.
Alter Domus
Alter Domus is a leading provider of fund administration and corporate services to the alternative investment industry. It is one of the largest private asset servicers in the world, with more than US$1.3 trillion in assets under management.
Yooz
Yooz is a cloud-based Purchase-to-Pay automation solution. Its solution incorporates Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation technologies for creating and storing invoices.
Alter Domus serves as the transfer agent for internal payments, most of which are prepared by its team. It also validates created transactions against what is agreed in the contract and, after verification, sends them to Kartesia for signature. Alter Domus has no signature authority for the payments it prepares.
Each month, Kartesia’s Funds team processes up to 100 settlements, with a maximum of 200 payments and is notified of payment schedules 5-10 days in advance. Yooz manages the invoices for each company through a dedicated account and is used in particular for storing, approving and searching invoices.
The biggest challenge in Kartesia’s daily payment processes is in the area of incoming payments and their reporting and reconciliation. The reconciliation process is performed daily by Kartesia’s fund team, but currently requires an inordinate amount of time as partner banks provide payment information in different ways and in some cases only upon request.
Marc Housieaux, Finance & Administration Director at Kartesia: “Extracting all transactions from all bank accounts and reconciling them with internal tools and reports should be simple and straightforward.”
Approving payments and sharing supporting information with banks are also currently a rather tedious and time-consuming process. This is mainly due to the fact that communication is mainly done via email, which leads to a high volume of messages that need to be managed.
After analysing Kartesia Funds’ requirements in joint discussions with Yooz and Alter Domus, Finologee is well positioned to solve the team’s payment issues through LYNKS. As a single bank gateway, it will enable them to significantly ease and streamline payment releases, accurately define signature rules between teams to maintain control and ultimately provide a simpler bank and account-wide reconciliation process leading to seamless reporting.
The customised extraction of reports played a central role in meeting the specific requirements of Kartesia Funds. One notable example was the need for a report on account balances, provided as an Excel file with daily opening and closing balances. Although this information is readily available in the standard LYNKS transaction report, Finologee created an additional step to improve the customer experience. It is now delivered as a separate file containing not only the essential data, but also additional specialised features to meet the client’s needs.
Marc Housieaux, Finance & Administration Director at Kartesia: “What we’re looking for is a platform that provides an overview of all payments and the ability to download documents per payment.”
Carlo Maragliano, Head of Delivery Management & Customer Success at Finologee:“We are pleased to be able to support Kartesia Funds in tackling their payments issues with the help of LYNKS. Once implemented, the platform will free them from some tedious and unnecessary tasks and also optimise their collaboration with partners such as Alter Domus.”
