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

West LB in UAT with Asset Control’s AC Plus, Plans To Go Live for Managing WM, Bloomberg in October

Subscribe to our newsletter

The operations group of German bank West LB AG has begun the roll-out of Asset Control’s AC Plus data management solution to first replace a legacy mainframe system managing feeds from WM and Bloomberg, with a view to using AC Plus to replace an inhouse built centralised data management solution in the longer term. The bank is in UAT now for the first deliverable, set to go live in October.

According to Alex Rich, sales director, EMEA at Asset Control, West LB initially approached the vendor at the FIMA event in London in November last year, having already looked at a few other potential solutions but not having felt “comfortable” with them. “The challenge they had was that they were running legacy software on the mainframe to manage data provider feeds, and they were looking for a piece of software to solve that challenge, but also that would be a strategic solution for them to use for data management in the future,” says Rich. “So while they wanted AC Plus as a short term fix, they also want to use it as a strategic centralised data platform going forward.”

West LB’s initial requirement was to automate the cleansing of data from its main sources, WM and Bloomberg, to eliminate manual intervention and reduce production costs and operational risk, he continues. “The bank wants to go live with AC Plus for WM and Bloomberg in October. They’re in UAT for that now. In fact, the bank had the solution being tested just a few weeks or so after buying the product, with its own rules for cleansing and data validation in place.” This demonstrates the benefit of providing a standardised product out of the box, Rich reckons. Though other data management system vendors might dispute the claim, Asset Control believes it is differentiated by taking a product – rather than consulting-led – approach to data management.

The only element of this implementation that was really new for Asset Control was the mainframe component, Rich says. “Most of our customers take data into a middleware platform or via point to point connections. West LB wants AC Plus to feed the mainframe and distribute data out that way.” The work involved for Asset Control to accommodate this requirement – common among German banks – was not significant, he reckons.

The bank is already planning for the roll-out of AC Plus as a strategic data management platform, he claims. “The solution going live in October will already feed a lot of divisions including WestLB Markets, the savings banks WestLB owns and all WestLB AG branches,” he says. “The bank already has an inhouse built centralised data solution and it is looking to replace that in a phased approach with AC Plus.”

Yoram Matalon, chairman of the group operations committee at WestLB, confirms: “We will now be able to work within a multi-source environment to manage our reference and corporate actions data via a scalable platform that can grow along with our future needs. We will be able to move, incrementally and on our own schedule, to the addition of new data feeds and the eventual centralisation of all of our data.”

Asset Control has high hopes of further successes in the German market. “Germany is a rich potential seam of new business for us, particularly as many of the clients we have in that and other European markets don’t yet use AC Plus for our full reference data capabilities,” says Rich. “What is quite common is for clients to deploy AC Plus in one area first and then build on it.” Other existing German Asset Control clients include Dresdner Bank, Commerzbank, HypoVereinsbank and Bayerische Landesbank.

In April this year, Asset Control was bought by Fidelity Ventures, which took a majority investment in the firm. Simultaneously Asset Control acquired TAP Solutions.

Phil Lynch, former CEO of Reuters Americas and a venture partner with Fidelity Ventures, was appointed CEO and president of Asset Control at that time (Reference Data Review, April 2007).

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: An update on data standards and global identifiers

Data standards and global identifiers have been parts of capital markets’ practices for many years, and more are being developed, reviewed and shaped as the industry acknowledges their role in streamlining data management, reducing risk, improving transparency, and achieving compliance. This webinar will discuss data standards and identifiers in play, as well as those in...

BLOG

A-Team Group Data Management Summit London – Don’t Miss It!

With A-Team Group’s Data Management Summit London just two weeks away on 14 March 2024 at Hilton Canary Wharf, here is a taster of some of the keynotes, panels and practitioner journeys that will be presented by leaders and innovators in the data management field. The overall theme of the day is the evolution of...

EVENT

Data Management Summit London

Now in its 14th year, the Data Management Summit (DMS) in London brings together the European capital markets enterprise data management community, to explore how data strategy is evolving to drive business outcomes and speed to market in changing times.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2023 – Eleventh Edition

Welcome to the eleventh edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a popular publication that covers new regulations in capital markets, tracks regulatory change, and provides advice on the data, data management and implementation requirements of more than 30 regulations across UK, European, US and Asia-Pacific capital markets. This edition of the handbook includes new...