Asset Control has rebuilt the heart of its AC Plus data management platform to meet demands for transparency in pending regulations such as the US Dodd-Frank Act and Europe’s Basel III and Solvency II directives. The transparency aspects of incoming regulations is having a significant impact on firms’ approaches to data management, a theme that will be discussed at A-Team’s Data Management Summit in London on May 22.
Using data tags and meta data, the company has added bi-temporal capabilities to AC Plus, essentially adding a time dimension to data views so that users of the software can meet regulatory requirements for on-demand audit trails of data changes and system amendments over time.
To date, the upgraded software has gone live at a hedge fund in New York seeking to comply with the SEC’s Regulation Financial Disclosure transparency rule, but it is expected to go much further.
According to Phil Lynch, CEO and president of Asset Control, “Many important regulations are not yet well defined, but we do know regulators will insist on firms having the ability to go back in time and track the source of data, how it has changed over time and who has changed it.
“We have invested a huge amount of work in exposing data tags and meta date to recreate data histories for regulatory purposes. Now we have the data capability to meet forthcoming regulations we will add reporting capabilities to AC Plus as regulations are defined. It will take weeks not months to build reports for particular regulations as we have not waited for regulations to be baked before preparing the data infrastructure to meet reporting requirements.”
Noting the depth and breadth of up-to-date information regulators will require, he added: “Without the tools to cut through the complexities this presents, firms will face huge operational challenges when it comes to compliance. The upgrades to AC Plus go a long way in helping financial services manage these pressures.”
The AC Plus upgrade is the result of a two year process of bi-annual client roundtable discussions supported by a consultant dedicated to keeping track of upcoming regulations. Two clients – one an asset manager, the other an investment bank – worked with AC Plus as development partners and the software has now been released to the company’s 70 buy and sell side customers and is on the market for new customers.
The upgrade is free to customers with software licences and maintenance agreements and can be pulled down from the Internet without disruption to the rest of the system and without changes to the user interface.
Says Lynch: “Data management has moved from a focus on providing the right data at the right time, to a focus on regulation and compliance. This is no longer about how a firm is operating today, but how it came to certain decisions over time.”
Subscribe to our newsletter
