Wachovia Corp. has once again expanded its use of Asset Control’s AC Plus data management platform to boost the capabilities of its internal risk management function. Wachovia originally implemented AC Plus in its risk management operation in 2004 (Reference Data Review, January 2005) and subsequently extended its use to other areas of the enterprise as part of a three-year project (Reference Data Review, September 2005).
The latest expansion involves the addition of sources of market data used to support Wachovia’s risk management systems. The bank has added several undisclosed “complex data feeds” that it says will help “improve the quality of market data utilized within risk management” as well as offering that data throughout the bank.
Wachovia’s risk solution makes use of snapshot, end-of-day and time-series pricing information for interest rates, credit spreads, equities, FX and commodities, gathered and managed by the AC Plus platform. Additionally, AC Plus consolidates and validates data from external sources, including Reuters, Bloomberg, FT Interactive Data and Markit Group, to provide consistency and reliability.
Wachovia is making use of Asset Control’s range of four-dimensional graphing capabilities. This will allow the bank to analyze and survey data anomalies and trends over time.
Speaking at the ISIPS conference in London this month, Martijn Groot, head of product management at Asset Control, outlined how Asset Control’s audit and backtracking functions allow clients to standardize and consolidate disparate and often-conflicting price data from multiple sources into a single consolidated price that can be published to internal application.
The process involves applying client-defined business rules to incoming and internal data sources. These rules reflect the client’s approach to data management, and may range in complexity from a sophisticated algorithm to a simple average in order to arrive at a figure that the institution is comfortable with.
