CounterpartyLink has reversed the process of building legal entity data hierarchies from the bottom up to deliver CPL Hierarchy Profile, a product designed to provide a top-down, single view of a legal entity including its entire group structure and links between entities in the structure.
The company has been researching and validating entity data from primary sources to build these kinds of top-down data hierarchies on an ad hoc basis for some time, but with CPL Hierarchy Profile it has developed technology that allows it to populate and visualise hierarchies automatically.
James Redfern, managing director of CounterpartyLink, explains: “CPL Hierarchy Profile is a significant departure from our standard process that responds to a customer request for an entity hierarchy by building the chain of ownership up from the entity to the ultimate parent and then maintains the data. CPL Hierarchy Profile responds to a customer request about an entity by starting with the ultimate parent and building down through all the parent’s subsidiaries, exposing all entities that are linked to the entity the customer is interested in. This provides a single view of all entities a parent owns and the links between them. This is important to the understanding of risk in a group structure. It can also support Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering requirements, and help financial institutions comply with sanctions.”
Unlike CounterpartyLink’s core entity data subscription services, CPL Hierarchy Profile solutions will be delivered, for the time being at least, as one-off PDF or flat data file reports and will not be maintained every day, instead providing a snap-shot in time of an entity hierarchy.
Redfern says initial interest in CPL Hierarchy Profile has come mainly from asset managers in Continental Europe, but he expects global take-up of the product in line with the company’s commitment to source, research and validate entity data in more than 200 jurisdictions. He also expects investment banks and stock exchanges that want to make deep dives into entity relationships to match the initial interest of asset managers.
