EDM vendor GoldenSource’s recent risk data management focused launch is reflective of the requirement in the market for increased transparency around the data used to make risk management decisions, explains Neill Vanlint, managing director of Europe and Asia at the vendor. Regulatory developments such as Basel III and Solvency II are driving firms to adopt a more enterprise-wide approach to the risk function and GoldenSource’s RiskHub solution set is therefore aimed at helping firms to meet these requirements.
There has been a lot of discussion in the market about the vital need to get risk data right in the face of both regulatory and business pressures and, as a result, the risk and compliance functions have got much more involved in the data management endeavour. Accordingly, the EDM vendor’s pitch around RiskHub is a response to this trend and the aim is to enable event driven synchronisation of information between systems for reporting and corporate governance requirements, managing inputs for risk calculations, and evaluation of risk exposure, across all major types of risk and asset classes.
RiskHub purports to allow for the integration of all risk relevant data in order to provide a more enterprise-wide view of risk exposure across a financial institution, including transparency into positions, transactions, and customer and counterparty exposures. To this end, the solution maps information from internal or external sources to the format required by risk applications and centralises and maintains this data in an information warehouse. Vanlint explains that this provides risk and compliance officers with direct access to market, counterparty, position and reference data from a single, standardised repository across all product and risk classes, without issues associated with silo based reporting by providing front to back transparency within a firm.
The vendor is also offering an optional add-on to RiskHub in the form of RiskMonitor, a front end that aims to provide an additional layer of data visualisation and business intelligence to users.
The buy side community in particular is a key target for the vendor, with asset managers involved in liability driven investment facing the challenge of meeting Solvency II requirements. “We have a real Solvency II story to tell,” contends Vanlint. “The data models underlying our RiskHub suite of products enable firms to meet a lot of the requirements of this new regulation. This is achieved by linking risk applications to the internal and external systems that supply them with data and providing a centralised data store for audit purposes.”
GoldenSource is not alone in its focus on Solvency II: during Sibos, EDM rival Cadis also released a platform targeted at enabling compliance with the new insurance focused regulation.
Moreover, much like many of its competitors in the market, GoldenSource is seemingly adopting a more focused approach to particular pain points within the industry in the face of a slowdown in the EDM market overall and risk management has accordingly become a prime target. This change in strategy is also indicative of the shift from data management residing in the IT department to being of much more interest to the business over recent years, where product managers and the like are being pulled into the decision making process.
As well as risk management, the challenges around valuations and OTC derivatives data management are also on GoldenSource’s radar. Vanlint explains that the approach will be to develop tailored solutions to meet the requirements of these particular spaces going forward.
The vendor is also keeping a close eye on the corporate actions data space, especially in the Asian markets, according to Vanlint. “There is a tendency within the Asian markets for the asset management community to rely on custodians for corporate actions data, but many are now building out shadow corporate actions data management systems because they can’t afford to wait for this data,” he explains.
In order to gain more traction in the Asian markets, GoldenSource is therefore on the hunt for two or three local partners to add to its roster in the next year or so. In particular, the vendor is seeking out consultancy partners with a particular expertise in the risk management sector, for obvious reasons.
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