Earlier this week, GoldenSource indicated that longstanding client M&G Investments has upgraded its implementation of the EDM vendor’s platform. Steve Engdahl, senior vice president of product strategy at the vendor, explains how the upgrade fitted into M&G’s Solvency II compliance preparations.
The European asset management firm first bought the GoldenSource solution back in 2003 in order to centralise and store its security master data and feed this data to its downstream fixed income compliance and order management systems. The focus at the time was solely as a back office implementation, says Engdahl, who joined GoldenSource from Charles River Development back in January, but the upgrade has extended this centralised data function to serve the front and middle office. M&G has also extended GoldenSource’s EDM platform to deal with derivatives instruments.
“The upgrade has allowed the platform to be extended to better serve the compliance, risk management and trading functions,” he says. “It was part of their preparation for Solvency II and a reaction to the doubling of the instruments they have had to deal with over time, as well as a desire to achieve consistencies with regards to data management across their business.” The systems that are now being supported by the upgraded platform include Algorithmics for risk, Fidessa LatentZero for trading and compliance and thinkFolio for portfolio management.
Unsurprisingly given the Solvency II imperative, the primary driver has been the support for the firm’s risk management capabilities and Engdahl indicates that the implementation, which was completed earlier this year, allows for much better traceability and auditability of the data underlying risk functions.
GoldenSource has increased its focus on the buy side community overall over the last couple of years and Engdahl indicates that this will continue into 2012, as more asset managers look to implement data management solutions to prepare for Solvency II. “The traceability of the data underlying risk management decisions and instrument and entity data itself is a key requirement for this community,” he concludes.
