Last year, data management solution provider Aim Software signed a partnership with Luxembourg-based, application service provider (ASP) specialist CetrelSecurities, which the vendors have now extended to the provision of cleansed reference data. The vendors are now working together to provide the Luxembourg market with an ASP platform based on the Gain data management platform, says Josef Sommeregger, vice president of business development and sales at Aim Software.
Sommeregger claims the data management solution vendor’s local presence in Luxembourg, which it established in September last year, will serve as a basis for a close cooperation with CetrelSecurities. He believes this will allow both companies to focus on their core competencies and “to offer added value service to the large joint customer base”.
Cetrel currently has around 20 clients using the service, which provides outsourced services in the area of pricing, reference data and corporate actions management. The long term strategic partnership with Aim is based on the vendor’s desire to benefit from Aim’s experience in the area of data management and its integration capabilities related to standard banking packages, says Carlo Houblie, executive vice president of CetrelSecurities.
“Aim Software’s flexible reference data solution as well as CetrelSecurities’ know how in the area of ASP provision complement each other in an ideal way. By being able to build on product components such as more than 35 maintained data feed connectors and on a highly secure production environment, CetrelSecurities and Aim Software are able to provide added value services such as pricing, reference data and corporate actions scrubbing, compliance solutions and interfaces to many banking packages based on Gain,” he elaborates.
The logic behind providing an outsourced solution is that clients will be spared the effort of installing and maintaining it in-house. Houblie claims that by relying on an outsourced service, clients will therefore be able to increase their operational efficiency and to concentrate on their core business.
Renaud Oury, executive vice president of CetrelSecurities, adds: “We are convinced that our joint expertise will help our clients to increase the reliability and quality of their overall reference data management, to effectively cut down their costs, while reducing their operational risks.“
The vendors began the initial partnership discussions in the second quarter of 2009 and implemented the joint solution for their first customer over the summer of last year. In order to fulfil the specific requirements of one of its larger European customers, CetrelSecurities opted for Gain Golden Copy from Aim Software and thus the partnership was born. The vendors are currently in the process of migrating their existing customer base onto the solution, which will happen in a phased approach during the course of this year.
Moreover, in the second quarter of this year, the vendor will also release a new pricing services solution with Cetrel. “On the pricing services side of our business, regulatory change has also had a big impact on uptake. The market volatility following on from the crisis has also meant that banks’ systems have been unable to cope with the volumes, this has meant a lot of demand for scrubbing and validation services for prices. Firms need to provide the right quality checks to meet market standards and they also need to contain their costs,” says Sommeregger.
