Clarient Entity Hub, a new service designed to simplify client data and document management, has gone live at banks and asset managers including Barclays, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and State Street.

The firms are leveraging Clarient Entity Hub to achieve greater standardization and transparency, reduce risk and costs, and improve the quality and timeliness of client reference data and documentation exchanged between counterparties, according to an announcement. DTCC will also be using the service, along with a number of other major financial firms, with go-lives scheduled in the coming months.

“For the past few months, we have been focused on building out the solution, both from a technology perspective as well as from an operating model perspective,” Matthew Stauffer, CEO of Clarient, told Markets Media. “Working closely with our founding members, we finalized and completed our first technology launch toward the end of last year.”

Clarient Entity Hub addresses regulatory mandates such as KYC, Fatca and others by providing electronic sharing of confidential documents across counterparties, and establishment of a consistent data approach to facilitate trading and custody relationships.

“We have taken a very deliberate approach to how information is owned, governed and ‘permissioned’,” said Stauffer. “We believe that the legal entity record and documentation must be owned by the provider of that content. At the same time, the providers are also responsible for determining who should be able to access this information. Clarient Entity Hub facilitates the validation and distribution of critical entity data and documents, but the owners of the content must be the controllers.”

Plans are underway to leverage the Global Markets Entity Identifier utility — provided by DTCC & Swift — to further facilitate the assignment of Legal Entity Identifiers through Clarient Entity Hub. “For every record that has an LEI, that LEI will be a primary identifier within Clarient Entity Hub,” said Stauffer. “We’ll be cross-referencing that LEI with our own identifiers as well as other common identifiers that are used today.”

Client on-boarding is subject to increasing regulation, raising compliance costs for financial firms. Constant, careful review of clients’ backgrounds, counterparties and jurisdictions means banks are dealing with duplicate data requests from industry participants with various standards.

Each regulation has its own unique data and documentation requirements that are captured either during an initial on-boarding or, after the client has been on-boarded.

“This is an operationally intensive and frustrating process for the client,” said Stauffer. “That’s where Clarient Entity Hub can really facilitate a smoother, improved interaction, as well as provide transparency around what is being asked of the client and for what purpose.”

Terri Messina, managing director of operations at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said in a statement: “Clarient Entity Hub provides a number of opportunities as we continue to transform our data management capabilities, including electronic sharing of confidential documents across counterparties and the establishment of a consistent data approach across the industry. The service goes beyond the traditional one way flow of information, providing essential data back to Goldman Sachs Asset Management to facilitate trading and custody relationships.”

Featured image by James Thew/Dollar Photo Club