Silverfinch, a business within the MoneyMate Group, has tied up with Fundsquare to push its Solvency II look-through data utility further into the European market.
Fundsquare, a data utility set up last year by the Luxembourg Stock Exchange to support cross-border distribution of investment funds, has a larger European footprint than Silverfinch and will make contracts with global asset managers and European insurance firms to use the Silverfinch utility, with Silverfinch handling operations.
MoneyMate rebranded and upgraded its Solvency II data utility to become the Silverfinch business in January 2014. Silverfinch is already working with 20 insurance firms and expects more to come onboard soon, but has teamed up with Fundsquare to speed up adoption ahead of the January 2016 Solvency II implementation deadline.
John Dowdall, managing director of Silverfinch, explains: “Silverfinch has made huge strides in the market in addressing the look-through challenge that both insurers and asset managers face. Partnering with an organisation like Fundsquare, whose expertise in fund market infrastructure is known across Europe, allows Silverfinch access to a broader European market.”
Silverfinch addresses the Solvency II look-through issue, which requires insurance firms to aggregate information about the assets held on their behalf by asset managers, by providing connectivity between asset managers and insurers in a secure and permissioned environment. Insurers inform Silverfinch about the data they need, the data is loaded into the utility and asset managers then approve or decline access to the data, maintaining control of the data and avoiding its exposure to competitors.
In order to streamline the data gathering and aggregation process, Silverfinch and Fundsquare have based the Solvency II data utility on the tripartite data exchange table that is being developed by the Investment Management Association in the UK, Club Ampere in France, and the BVI in Germany. This requires asset managers to adopt the standard data model to upload data to the utility and insurers to use the standard to consume the data. Asset managers pay Silverfinch a listing fee per fund and insurance firms use the service free of charge.
Dominique Valschaerts, CEO of Fundsquare, says: “Working with Silverfinch, which like us operates as a market utility, allows both our companies to provide a coherent response to the challenges of Solvency II by setting a pan-European standard data model for managers. The utility model has the advantages of allowing asset managers to retain control of their data and protect their intellectual property.”
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