Lugano, Switzerland-based Arner Bank is implementing AIM Software’s data management environment GAIN for the integration of price, static and corporate actions data provided by Bloomberg and Telekurs Financial. The project is slated for completion in September, with go-live planned for October. Arner Bank is implementing GAIN in conjunction with Galileo – the Security Master File, a golden copy environment based on GAIN, created by its Italian partner Sintea to meet the specific business and compliance requirements of financial institutions in Ticino, the Italian-speaking Swiss canton.
Josef Sommeregger, head of business development at AIM Software, says this deal is significant for AIM in that, though the vendor claims market leadership in the Swiss market as a whole, “Arner is the first Ticino-based financial institution using our platform as a complete security master file for pricing and static data as well as corporate actions. Arner chose our software after a thorough selection process involving several workshops and client specific demonstrations.”
One of the reasons for the bank’s selection of AIM is, Sommeregger believes, that the vendor could facilitate a rapid implementation. “It will be one of the fastest implementations we have ever done,” he says. “It is significant – for Telekurs and Bloomberg data, covering prices, static data and corporate actions, and involving the bank’s individual business rules. The tight implementation time at Arner is the result of years of productisation efforts in all our projects which have yielded a solution that, building on administration facilities and libraries of rules and functions, can be easily parameterised according to customer needs,” he reckons. “For the first time with Arner Bank we are providing a solution that is almost turnkey. By leveraging a set of predefined business workflows and a library of business rules we will be able to significantly curtail implementation time.”
Owing to the modularity of the implemented solution, Arner Bank could add further data feeds into its solution in future if it wanted to, or substitute one of its current providers with an alternative data source, says Sommeregger.
Adds Flavio Mascolo, director at Arner Bank: “With the two main data sources Bloomberg and Telekurs, it was becoming necessary for us to implement solid data centralisation strategies and straight-through processes. The solution met our criteria and stood out among the competition for its maturity and of its breadth of functionalities.”
AIM’s relationship with Sintea is of around three years’ standing, Sommeregger says. “It is one of our most successful partnerships. Sintea is an Italian provider of a wide range of solutions for the Italian investment management industry (it has some 80 clients of its own). Owing to Sintea’s market knowledge we were able to address the Italian market with a very targeted offering which accounts for the specific regulatory environment in Italy. We have hence been able to win seven joint clients in Italy during the past two years. With Arner we have now extended our cooperation beyond the borders of the Italian market.” He reports that detailed discussions are also currently under way with three other banks in Lugano.
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