Unit Trust Software Ltd of Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey is a software house in the financial market which is actually doing well in this post Black Monday period. Unit Trust is a Complementary Software House to DEC, and its business is all in the vertical market of funds management, with cli-nts ranging from composite insurance companies to stockbroking partnerships. Approximately half its revenue is generated from its timesharing bureau, offering access to its remote host at a typical rate of UKP12.50 per hour connect time, and 5 pence for block storage. Most of the rest of its turnover comes from the company’s bespoke software work, while only 5% is derived from the licensing of packaged software. The move into bespoke software was strategic, since Unit Trust believed that it had to break its reliance on both timesharing and on licensed income to survive the market downturn. To this end it invested in programming staff and has, over the past year, developed a unitised personal pension plan system as well as an FSAcom-liant unit trust administration system. A reflection of this policy is the threefold increase in turnover to UKP2.7m for the 17 months to November 30 over the prior 12 months. The irregular accounting period is due to the fact that Unit Trust was taken private last May when it was acquired by the Throgmorton Trust Plc from the Framlington Group. Unfortunately, no figures for profit are yet available. Also, by a strange quirk of fate, the company heralded its financial success with the launch of two software packages in areas where, it swiftly added, there was still room for growth for licensed software. The areas in question are Personal Equity Plans and investment trust savings plans, where Unit Trust has two new additions to its Utopia suite up and running. Both programs run on DEC VAXes and, with access to the company’s timesharing VAX 8700, users can send up to 1,500 contracts an hour depending on the type of line and communication controllers they have. Such throughput is need-ed, for example, when a new fund is launched. On the whole, both programs are designed to take the effort out of managing the Personal Equity or investment trust scheme held on a nominee basis. Thus, the necessary reports and correspondence are systemgenerated. The programs are also designed for schemes which handle a large number of small savings oriented accounts with regular sums of mon-y coming through BACS, the Bankers Automated Clearing Service. Dividends or tax credits, depending on the scheme, are automatically reinvested. Both programs are available now and are licensed according to the size of a user’s processor. Prices start at UKP15,000 for a version on a MicroVAX 2000.
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