Calyon has been engaged in a lengthy project to connect its “patchwork of IT systems” for counterparty data and has, thus far, managed to eliminate 30,000 duplicates, said Serge Moutot, the firm’s head of global referentials management. He explained to FIMA delegates that the decision to centralise and integrate counterparty data across the firm was taken following the merger of Credit Lyonnais and Credit Agricole.
“We had 65,000 records at the start and now we have 85,000 counterpart records in the new centralised system,” he told delegates. “There is now full synchronisation across the organisation with the central database and we have moved at a rate of one migration per month.”
The project has not yet been completed but the main regional hubs have been tackled, including Paris, London and New York, said Moutot. The types of data are harmonised across the central and the local systems, although certain complex elements are still managed at the level of the country. Due to the common data vocabulary, it has become easier to deal with discrepancies and processing costs have been reduced, he said.
Nearly all counterparts are now listed in the central database: “At the beginning, 30% of counterparts had a unique identifier and now 80% are covered.”
Moutot’s team was created in July and the focus for the data management project for the next year will be on migrating the Hong Kong office to the centralised golden copy data, ongoing administration and creating a “middle office” space for discussion between the back office and the front.
