Firms need to pinpoint where, when and how data is received and consumed.

While information overload poses a challenge for all industries, it’s particularly acute for the financial sector because of regulatory demands.

“Information is a pillar of the financial services business; it is now globalized, electronic, high frequency and interrelated across instruments, markets, and institutions,” Phil Lynch, CEO, of Asset Control, told Markets Media. “As such, it is no longer able to be effectively managed by humans using terminals, limited sources of information and spreadsheets.”

Asset Control has expanded its AC Plus platform to provide an on-demand audit trail of all data changes and system amendments over time, enabling firms to audit decisions based upon the information that was available to them at a specific point in time, the company said.

AC Plus is an enterprise class data management platform that supports both reference and time series-based data.
“Price and reference data is expensive, complex and voluminous. Often, this information is procured from many different sources and stored separately in applications and databases throughout a business,” Lynch said. “This makes it hard to access and use, expensive to own and maintain, and inconsistent in quality.”

As new directives such as Dodd-Frank, Basel III and Solvency II are refined and implemented, increasing demands are placed on financial firms’ ability to track the source of data, how it has changed over time and who has changed it.

“In the ongoing attempt to reduce risk and increase transparency, regulators require a greater breadth and depth of up-to-date information,” said Lynch. “Without the tools to cut through the complexities this presents, firms will face huge operational challenges when it comes to compliance.”

Upgrades have also been made to all aspects of the data management process within AC Plus: acquisition, processing, querying and data distribution.

The ability to pull data in near real-time from a wide variety of sources to calculate exposure reports and feed risk algorithms is especially important as plans toward centrally cleared OTC markets continue, said Lynch.