HSBC Fund Services has become the first fund administrator in Korea to introduce Swift capability for its fund admin services. The move is part of its plans to better service domestic clients by providing easier access to overseas investments.

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Markit’s iTraxx Asia indices, the family of synthetic indices referencing the most liquid names in the Asian bond markets, which will roll into their ninth series on 20 and 21 March 2008, will not include the Markit iTraxx Asia ex-Japan Main index and the Markit iTraxx Japan 80.

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China Securities Index Co (CSI) officially launched the CSI Fund Index Series on February 4. The series includes four indices, the CSI Open-end Fund Index and three sector indices – the CSI Stock Index, the CSI Hybrid Fund Index and the CSI Bond Fund Index.

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The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) is collaborating with FTSE International to deliver six sets of indices that investors can use as an internationally accepted market index for trading products including exchange-funded trades, derivatives instruments and other funds. It will also increase liquidity for the underlying securities as well, since it is calculated on a group of specific securities.

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China Securities Index (CSI) has formally released three CSI sector bond indices of the CSI T-bond Index, the CSI Financial Bond Index and the CSI Enterprise Bond Index. The constituents of these bond indices are composed of eligible treasury bonds, financial bonds and enterprise bonds on the inter-bank market and the exchanges, respectively.

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Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), Singapore Exchange (SGX) and FTSE Group (FTSE) have launched the revamped Straits Times Index (STI) as well as the other 18 new indices of the FTSE ST Index Series today.

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Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) and Hang Seng Indexes Company have agreed to HKEx’s use of the Hang Seng Industry Classification System (HSICS) for the classification of all Hong Kong-listed companies.

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WealthCraft Systems, an IT solutions provider for financial institutions in the Asia-Pacific region, and Decillion Solutions Group, an NEC company, are collaborating to implement and market two solutions designed to help firms in Asia improve the automation of funds transactions. The collaboration centres on WealthCraft’s ATOMS On Demand for SWIFTNet Funds, a hosted software as a service (SaaS) solution launched at last month’s Sibos in Boston, and ATOMS Enterprise for SWIFTNet Funds, a gateway application which acts as a message concentrator or router for inhouse unit trust applications. These solutions will be implemented in Decillion’s service bureau.

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Through the quiet acquisition of Kinetic Information System Services, a UK-based index calculation platform, by its Mergent Inc. subsidiary, Xinhua Finance has gained an independent means of developing and supplying its own financial market indices, and the underlying data packages required by fund managers to weight their investments and measure fund performance.

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