About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Nordea Asset Management Taps Markit EDM for Security Master Management

Subscribe to our newsletter

The asset management arm of Scandinavian financial services group Nordea has implemented Markit’s enterprise data management (EDM) software to master its static data. Nordea selected the Markit solution, which was acquired with Cadis Software earlier this year, after an extensive search of potential solutions and a proof of concept. An incumbent vendor solution was not part of the competition, but remains in use for other data management tasks within the group.

The search for an EDM solution stemmed from a decision at Nordea to rationalise solutions that had built up over time and select a best-of-breed security master management solution. In the first instance, the Markit software is cleansing and validating both internal data and external market data feeds, and working within rules defining master copies set by the system’s users, to provide security masters to Nordea’s downstream accounting system. While not in the scope of the current project, the Markit solution allows multiple copies of a master to be created and delivered to a range of applications, such as risk and compliance. It can also be used as an enterprise platform for all types of data, although at Nordea it is limited to reference data.

Daniel Simpson, managing director and head of EDM at Markit, says that the addition of Nordea brings Markit’s customer tally in Scandinavia to half a dozen, up from zero 18 months ago. “This is a good client win for us and we have a strong pipeline in Scandinavia. We are also experiencing growth in Northern Europe and the US as a result of regulation and cost cutting. We will move into South America with a base in Sao Paulo, Brazil in the first quarter of 2013 and we are putting people on the ground in Tokyo and Frankfurt where Markit already has operations,” says Simpson.

He notes increasing interest among buy-side firms choosing to outsource back and middle-office services in using Markit EDM to reconcile data and facilitate data interchange between the firm and outsourcer, and also growing interest in the company’s cloud capacity. “We developed technology to support a cloud version of the EDM solution a few years ago and clients are now looking at the hosted solution. We have secured three hosted clients over the past six months and demand is strong on both the buy and sell sides. At the moment, firms are interested in hosting non-proprietary information, but in future we expect a slow migration towards hosting more data including position data,” says Simpson. Meantime, Markit will make its next enhancements to the EDM software in version 9, which is due for release in February 2013.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: How to simplify and modernize data architecture to unleash data value and innovation

The data needs of financial institutions are growing at pace as new formats and greater volumes of information are integrated into their systems. With this has come greater complexity in managing and governing that data, amplifying pain points along data pipelines. In response, innovative new streamlined and flexible architectures have emerged that can absorb and...

BLOG

Modern Data Landscape Comes Under Scrutiny at Data Management Summit London

From data products and marketplaces to the new challenges of regulatory compliance and the latest thinking on unstructured data, A-Team Group’s Data Management Summit London 2025 took in the full breadth of topics that chief data officers and their teams are dealing with daily. With a line up of C-suite executives and expert speakers from...

EVENT

TradingTech Briefing New York

Our TradingTech Briefing in New York is aimed at senior-level decision makers in trading technology, electronic execution, trading architecture and offers a day packed with insight from practitioners and from innovative suppliers happy to share their experiences in dealing with the enterprise challenges facing our marketplace.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...