EDM vendor GoldenSource has this week launched its new Data Warehouse solution on the market, pulling together its various data management offerings under the banner of a consolidated repository for a firm’s various data sets. Mike Meriton, CEO of the vendor, explains to Reference Data Review that it has already bagged two asset management clients for the new solution, both of whom have around US$500 billion in assets under management.
According to Meriton, the launch is aimed at helping firms to meet new regulatory compliance and risk management requirements by providing firms with a single repository of data including reference data, position data and transaction data. “We saw an opportunity to leverage the data coverage of our current platform and allow firms access to a data warehouse that can house all the data required for risk, performance and compliance functions,” he elaborates.
The vendor contends that by linking data elements relating to the same object, the Data Warehouse solution will create an enterprise-wide view of risk, performance and compliance for clients and provide a holistic view of portfolios and associated risk. Meriton explains that this is particularly important for the asset management community, who need to provide accurate and comprehensive end of day reporting.
Buy side customers will no longer need to build a warehouse on top of their data model or hire teams to construct it for them, saving the firm both time and money, he claims. It seems that two asset managers agree with this logic: two customers have signed on the dotted line already. Both are now in the first stages of implementation, with one due to go live on the solution before the year is out and the other due to complete implementation in the first quarter of next year.
One client is the wholly owned subsidiary of a large insurance firm and its decision to implement a data warehouse solution was based on a desire to launch a new enterprise risk management platform, says Meriton. The firm had already selected the applications provider for the risk management platform, which Meriton explains is one of the top three providers of such platforms in the market, but wanted to be able to support this new platform with the rollout of a single data repository.
The other client is a freestanding institutional asset management firm that has just completed a major acquisition of another firm of a similar size. “It has essentially doubled in size and wanted to be able to integrate the two independent companies’ systems in order to be able to have a single of view of its customers,” says Meriton.
The first priority is therefore on supporting common client reporting and the firm’s client website. However, much like the insurance firm subsidiary, the customer is also keen to launch an enterprise risk management platform later down the line, he continues. As well as commercial solutions, both firms also contemplated in-house development of data warehouses via the implementation of an ETL tool feeding into a custom database, but both opted for an out of the box solution due to the “significant time to market and high cost” of internal development, says Meriton.
“They both liked our normalised data model that has already been validated within other implementations and meant they didn’t have to experiment with the model for the architecture of the data warehouse,” he adds. “It was a combination of our quick time to market and lower risk implementation.”
The vendor also claims that a key differentiator of the solution is that data will be gathered and held even after it has been purged from its original system location, thus maintaining compliance with regulatory standards. The Data Warehouse is also accessible over the web, and includes improved data visualisation features and reporting details such as a schedule of realised gains and losses, purchases and sales, funds under management by asset type, bond holdings by maturity detail and rating, securities, accounts, positions, total account value and net asset value (NAV) for funds.
Meriton indicates that the vendor was truly put through its paces during the initial period of negotiation with the two clients, who were both very thorough in their requirements. “This was not a case of paper-based RFPs, it involved pilots and thorough deep dives,” he says.
As for the future, Meriton reckons the pipeline will remain strong, as firms look to meet KYC, risk management and even living wills requirements. “The only way to successfully unwind a portfolio or measure systemic risk is to have one common data repository across an organisation,” he says. Tom Stock, senior vice president of product management at GoldenSource, adds that in terms of future development of the platform itself, the vendor will focus on increasing the number of data attributes that can be stored in the warehouse, including performance and attribution data for fixed income instruments.
“We are also working on the connections and interfaces for the solution to be able to integrate it with other systems. We are looking for partners in order to develop these interfaces at the moment,” he says. Speaking of partners, earlier this year, GoldenSource partnered with Xenomorph to launch a centralised market and reference data solution, which it is also hoping to promote during Sifma week.
The development work lasted around six months and involved the building of interfaces between the two solutions in order to connect GoldenSource’s back office focused data solution with Xenomorph more middle to front office evaluated pricing and analytics solution. The partners have also recently netted their first client for the solution and Meriton indicates that the pipeline for this also seems “exciting”.
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