UMB Fund Services (UMBFS), a Milwaukee-based division of UMB Financial Corp., will renovate its 72,000 square foot office at 803 W. Michigan St. in downtown Milwaukee this summer. "We’re looking to grow our business and reconfigure our offices to become more efficient and have better flow," said John Zader, chief executive officer of UMBFS. "Our offices here were kind of piecemealed together over the years."
The Milwaukee division is one of UMB’s fastest-growing divisions, Zader said. It currently has 160 employees in Milwaukee, and the local office will grow to about 180 workers by the end of the year if it meets its projections. The renovation includes new exterior signage, a new rooftop deck, new carpet and paint, upgraded audio-visual systems with wireless audio and video conference, and reconfigured and upgraded work stations. With the renovation project, the company will be able to accommodate up to 250 employees. UMB Financial Corp. is headquartered in Kansas City and is traded on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol of UMBF.
UMBFS serves mutual funds, offering accounting, administration, cash management, distribution, custody and transfer agency. It also offers administrative, accounting and investor services to hedge funds. Most of the funds that UMBFS serves have $100 million to $10 billion in assets and as many as 100,000 shareholder accounts. To help fuel its growth, UMBFS launched a new service named Total Distribution. The new service helps mutual funds and other UMBFS clients track their most profitable financial intermediaries and best prospects, Zader said.
"This allows (clients) to see who is actually selling their funds and what they are doing with the funds," he said. "We’re using the technology so our clients can target their best prospects for growth." Total Distribution uses AccessDiscovery, a new product developed for UMBFS by Access Data, a provider of data management services for mutual fund companies and financial intermediaries, and Discovery, a database of financial intermediary information. AccessDiscovery and the Total Distribution offering were developed based on what UMBFS was hearing from clients, Zader said.
"We’re the only service provider that will offer end-to-end distribution for our clients and their prospects," he said. "Everybody else that does administration, accounting and custody doesn’t have a product like this to offer now. I think it will help us grow our business and faster than we could do without it."
