Daiwa Securities SMBC Europe, has selected the StreetReference product from Financial Technologies International (FTI) as the basis for re-engineering its reference data management environment in Europe.
The investment bank will use StreetReference to centralise all European data, including client and securities reference data on a multi-lingual, multi-currency platform. In particular, it will build a common data architecture and data language, facilitating improved account handling, the flexibility to quickly introduce new product lines and the ability to transition from legacy systems. Daiwa hopes to reduce system constraints and improve the quality and accessibility of enterprise-wide data. This will enable it to realise operational efficiencies by reducing exceptions-related issues associated with reference data. Graeme Muirhead, executive director of technology, Daiwa Securities SMBC Europe, says, “After undertaking a very thorough evaluation of vendors offering data management solutions, we concluded that FTI’s StreetReference product will provide us with a scalable centralized reference data platform to support the company’s business in Europe now and into the future.” Steve Popple, director, EMEA & Asia Pacific at FTI, says that the company has been working with the bank since the contract was signed at the beginning of April. “We are well advanced on the first stage of the project, which is the detailed implementation plan and will be working with Daiwa as we move ahead to rapidly deliver the infrastructure.” Bank officials and FTI staff decline to talk about the details of the project. Other sources say that it is part of a larger overhaul of the IT infrastructure that supports Daiwa trading across Europe, which is largely built on in-house mainframe-based software. These sources say that the need to overhaul that infrastructure gave the bank the opportunity to revise its entire data architecture, so the data management evaluation was not simply of the reference data solutions, though it is understood that solutions from Asset Control, Eagle Investment Systems and Cicada were looked at. Currently, the bank is building a working prototype, scheduled to be completed by mid-Summer, to demonstrate the proof of concept to the business side. In parallel with this, the bank will begin populating the database, starting with customer data and moving up through increasingly complex data types, according to sources. Daiwa will be using two key StreetReference applications: StreetReference for Securities and StreetReference for Customers. The first application is a repository for securities, pricing and financial institutions information as well as corporate actions declarations; and the second a repository of information encompassing customers, accounts, organizations, and employees. This repository also houses the relevant information relating to other parties such as custodian and transfer or paying agents. These two applications combine to provide a consistent security and customer master and will help Daiwa Securities SMBC Europe realize its objectives of achieving consistent, consolidated data across its European operations, translating into improved operational efficiencies and increased customer service support. StreetReference is based on StreetModel, FTI’s Oracle-based financial data model, and will be integrated with Daiwa Securities SMBC Europe systems through an adapter to Reuters’ Tibco, Daiwa’s chosen middleware platform. StreetReference’s integrated search engine and browser-based interface provides access to consolidated decision-support information for trading, operations, research and financial control. It processes and publishes messages using XML, to allow users to distribute data to multiple applications, and quickly map new data feeds. The system allows banks to process data once and distribute it widely to the front, middle, and back office and to customers.
