Last month, EDM platform provider GoldenSource announced that it had won a deal to provide the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) with a new corporate data management platform. Neill Vanlint, managing director of EMEA and APAC client operations for the vendor, explains that the GoldenSource EDM platform was selected after a rigorous two month long proof of concept at the start of the year and ASX represents the first exchange to have rolled out the platform, but will not be the last.
ASX considered a range of rival vendor offerings during the RFP, including a local solution provider, but opted for the GoldenSource platform to upgrade its legacy CORE corporate data management system. In fact, the exchange first examined the platform around seven years ago, back when it was part of GoldenSource predecessor FTI’s solution set, according to Vanlint. The project at the time was put on hold, but the exchange kept the solution in mind when it decided to invest in a new centralised platform for its company, securities, corporate actions and trading data this year.
Vanlint describes the POC as “very in depth” to meet the current and future needs of ASX, noting that the exchange is facing pressure from regulators, clients and competitors including new entrant Chi-X, which is planning to enter the Australian equity trading arena later this year. “The exchange was keen to improve workflow automation and risk management, and achieve efficiencies, as well as reducing the time to market of launching new products,” he says.
The platform will now serve as a repository of historical data and a foundation for the automation of corporate actions event data from announcement out to the exchange’s customers and data vendors. Vanlint highlights the platform’s workflow automation capabilities as a key point of interest for the exchange in matching its own data processes. Jeff Olsson, group executive for technology at ASX, indicated during the initial announcement that the platform should act as a “key strategic operational enabler.”
A lot of the work thus far has focused on customising screens and systems to meet ASX’s needs, taking into account data attributes and workflows, explains Vanlint. This workflow has been built on top of an open source framework called Eclipse, which he indicates will provide ASX with a high degree of visibility into its data processes.
The implementation is the second in Australia for GoldenSource and it is the first exchange client for the platform, but Vanlint expects many more to follow. As for other growth markets in the Asia Pacific region, he points to China as a key focus: “The asset management community that is being enabled to enter the international market via the QDII regulation is looking to be able to deal with these new instruments and systems, hence they are interested in exploring a shared services approach to data management,” he says.
The Japanese market is also looking to move towards International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and is therefore also investing in data management capabilities related to compliance projects. “There is also an appetite for shared services in the Japanese market that is opening up doors for the EDM vendor community,” Vanlint explains.
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