Reference Data Management
Reference data management has imagined critical significance in the global securities and capital markets sector, as regulatory requirements become more stringent everywhere. Financial institutions are gearing up for a slew of regulations in various industries
To manage the increasing compliance burden, financial institutions has to improve their existing systems to make them more agile. The challenge is further compounded by a weak global economic climate resulting in pressure to increase cross-selling, and already-tight IT budgets weighed down by integration initiatives related to mergers & acquisitions.
Reference data management is of particular importance for front office functions in the securities and capital markets space as:
- Demand for intra-day risk updates are forcing firms to re-architect the data systems that feed their risk systems
- Data management is being increasingly out source to mitigate the costs
- Improved data quality can reduce a firm's capital reserve requirements
- Data flow and process re-engineering will speed up client onboarding
- Data consolidation facilitates creating the single view of customer needed to cross-sell
Today, data managers are focused upon:
- Quality of data which is key to automation, metrics, de-duplication, data sourcing, classifications, standardized procedures & exception management
- Strategy for legacy system retirement, roadmaps, migrations, single view of customer & single view of risk
- Enhanced Governance to support data stewardship, semantics,data policy, formation of steering committees & working groups, and standards
WTM has rich experience in the reference data management space, and is the data management outsourcing partner to five global financial services firms. WTM has been the implementation partner for numerous major projects and consulting engagements around the globe and has worked with financial instruments, entity/ client/ counterparty data,and account/book data.
WTM's Reference Data Practice unites the best capabilities across the organization's business and technology service lines to deliver reference data expertise in IT and operations outsourcing and consulting to clients across geographies.
WTM's current targets for investment and client-facing programs include:
- Offshoring of data quality
- Building a single view of customer
- Risk Enablement through data quality