ADP, Avox Sign Up to Sponsor EDM Council

ADP Brokerage Services Group and Deutsche Boerse-owned Avox have signed up as sponsors of the EDM Council. They join BearingPoint, Cicada, GoldenSource, IBM and SunGard. This development comes as the EDM Council undertakes its transition to a member-owned, rather than a sponsor-owned, model (Reference Data Review, September 2006). Ken Price, CEO of Avox, says this change in operating model was a prerequisite for Avox signing up. “When the EDM Council was first established, we had some concerns that it might be perceived as simply a group of vendors trying to capture a market,” he says. “The fact that in 2007 it is being handed over to the financial institutions to run was the main criteria for our signing up. We wouldn’t want to be involved in any initiative that was proprietary because that goes against everything we do. The council has a good cross-section of financial institutions as members, and we are particularly interested in getting involved in the business metrics working group as this relates to our efforts on the data quality benchmarking side.” ADP’s commitment to the council comes as it steps up its pursuit of opportunities to deploy the securities master database it maintains as part of its Global Processing Solution with non-bureau clients (Reference Data Review, September 2006).