The recently published examiner report into the Lehman bankruptcy indicates the scale of the data challenge faced when winding down a financial institution of its size: the examiner was faced with three perabytes (otherwise known as 350 billion pages) of electronically stored data to process. Unsurprisingly, given the fact that information needed to be presented before the end of the next century, the examiner was only able to collect and process five million of these documents (around 40,000,000 pages, or 0.01% of the total number of pages). This challenge was further exacerbated by the storage of this data on “arcane, outdated or non-standard" systems, said the report by Anton Valukas of Jenner & Block.
The Colombian central securities depository (CSD) Deposito Centralizado de Valores de Colombia (Deceval) has been appointed as the national numbering agency for the country, according to a recent letter from the CSD’s CEO Jorge Hernan Jaramillo Ossa. Deceval will therefore be responsible for allocating six character Classification of Financial Instrument (CFI) codes and 12 character International Securities Identification Number (ISIN) codes for securities in the Colombian market that are subject to the ISO 6166 and ISO 10962 standards.
The data management community could potentially learn a lot about standardisation from the world of performance measurement, suggested Corné Reiners, head of both FSC performance measurement and data management at Robeco Asset Management, to delegates to TSAM in London this week. A lot of cooperation has been achieved within the area of performance measurement between asset management firms and this led to the development of Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS), which have achieved great traction in the market, he contended.
They may differ in their opinions in how to go about effecting change (see last year’s FIMA standards panel for proof, see 
The challenge of getting a whole firm “into the same boat” and understanding the true benefits of a data management project requires strong leadership and governance from the outset, said Hans Lux, enterprise data architect at UBS Global Asset Management, to the delegation in attendance at TSAM 2010 earlier this week. The importance of data governance is far from a new concept, but Lux stressed that firms should use the audit trail to their advantage in the current environment where regulatory scrutiny is so intense.
Getting buy in from senior management and understanding from those at the grassroots level with regards to tackling data management challenges has become much easier as a result of the current industry focus on data, said Shannon Walker, IT architect at Deutsche Bank, to delegates to yesterday’s TSAM event in London. However, she warned that firms must involve those in the “middle”, namely end users from the business side, in data management projects in order to ensure they are on board with the changes and that the overall project is a success.
A-Team Insight Exchange is a new event series for 2010, which will combine A-Team’s expertise in financial markets IT with thought leadership from world-class technology innovators and practical experience from financial market practitioners.
Last month, the International Organisation of Securities Commissions’ (IOSCO) Technical Committee published the details of the new agreed template for the global collection of hedge fund data in order to better manage systemic risk. These new data requirements are aimed at bringing a new level of transparency to the traditionally opaque sector but will, in effect, mean that these funds will be forced to invest in data systems similar to their more conservative buy side counterparts.
Loading ...
