Challenger Limited, the publicly listed Australian investment management firm, has appointed State Street to provide custody and, through State Street Alpha, back-, middle- and front office investment administration services, for a suite of listed and unlisted investment vehicles with AUD127bn (USD85bn) AuM. Challenger will be one of the largest investment managers in the region to deploy the State Street Alpha platform, an asset servicing platform integrating the front, middle and back office from a single provider.
In this new client relationship, State Street will be the custodian and investment administrator for the entire Challenger group, which includes the multi-affiliate platform Fidante, fixed income platform Challenger Investment Management, and Challenger Life, the provider of annuity products in the Australian market. With this mandate, approximately 100 Challenger employees will transfer to State Street.
In 2022 Challenger signed a deal with SimCorp to launch a new stand-alone company, Artega, to provide investment administration services to Challenger, Fidante Partners and third-party clients. At the time, Artega was hailed as Australia’s first cloud-based front-to-back investment operations platform, providing fully integrated investment administration services for asset managers and owners across Australia and APAC. David Mackaway, the current CEO of Artega, and members of his management team will also be joining State Street. In 2012 Challenger appointed Citi as its custodian.