Another month, another twist in the tail of the International Business Entity Identifier (IBEI) story. In fact, there could be two twists this month if the Swift CIVIC initiative does turn out to be on the skids.

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Unrest among industry participants about the efficacy of ISO standards creation is reaching a peak as the failure of the formal process to keep pace with the reality of market requirements looks set to prompt a rethink about the best way to create standards for financial markets.

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The enterprise data management (EDM) systems marketplace has entered a new phase, as a rash of recent corporate activity and a general maturing of the providers and their offerings is enabling speedier implementations and faster returns, engendering new confidence in the value of EDM projects. The managed data services proposition has also been injected with a new lease of life, as the shortcomings in execution of outsourcing strategies by putative providers in the past are addressed.

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The results of the second ballot among national markets on ISO 16372 International Business Entity Identifier (IBEI) are in - and with eight countries voting against and six for (plus three abstentions and four no votes), the future’s not looking very bright for the standard. That said, as one industry observer puts it, “it’s not dead until a stake is driven through its heart!” The plan now is to discuss the vote and the extensive comments provided by the national markets at the ISO TC68 SC4 plenary meeting in South Africa in November, so the story continues.

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Proactive risk management is a key driver for investment in improving client and counterparty data, finds a new report from A-Team Group, sponsored by GoldenSource. While it has been well publicised that regulations like KYC and AML have forced firms to pay tactical attention to client and counterparty data, it is now clear that there is a move towards more “defensive” management to ensure compliance through proactive risk management. Firms want to achieve full awareness of potential exposure, on an ongoing basis. The recent “credit crunch” has only served to reinforce this trend, the research report suggests.

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The great and the good of the enterprise data management industry globally turned out in force for FIMA USA 2007 in New York earlier this month, to participate in a conference agenda that in one sense delivered very little that was actually new.

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Concern among industry participants is growing about the possible operational and financial implications of the current lack of a standard International Business Entity Identifier (IBEI) for use in transaction reporting under MiFID. The issue raised its head (again) during a meeting of experts this month in London under the auspices of an ISO Working Group

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The obsession of the industry at large with over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, in particular credit default swaps (CDSs) but also interest rate swaps and increasingly equity derivatives, is having an ever greater impact on the world of reference data.

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At the Sibos Standards Forum in Sydney earlier this month, securities data came under the spotlight during a panel session designed to fill delegates in on the progress of ISO TC68/SC4/WG11, the ISO working group charged with the development of ISO 19312.

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Bank owned co-operative Swift believes the industry should enter “A new age for reference data – collaboration”. One of the opening sessions at this year’s Sibos conference in Sydney, from 9-13 October, will be an interactive panel discussion on this very topic. Based on its 30 years of managing the BIC Directory Service, Swift believes it can play a pivotal role in helping the industry by managing other types of reference data as well. Is it right? That is what the co-operative hopes to find out during this session.

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A-Team’s survey, commissioned by Reuters, which explored the approaches to reference data management of 100 reference data managers, has now been made available free of charge. We’d like to extend a big thanks to all the managers who spared their time to take part. To get your copy and understand how your peers handle the data challenge, you can register to download at: http://about.reuters.com/productinfo/datascope/

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Regulations – and not straight-through-processing, and the potential for operational efficiencies – are driving financial institutions to grasp control of their reference data management processes. Reference data initiatives are increasingly driven by senior management – often at board level – mostly through fear of regulatory censure should they fail to comply with the new regulations.

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New research from A-Team Consulting, publisher of Reference Data Review, demonstrates market-leading reference data supplier FT Interactive Data’s dominant market position in terms of interfaces to a broad swathe of financial services software applications. The wide-ranging research – Software Providers: Working with Reference Data – offers a view of how reference data is used to drive applications performing a variety of strategic functions within financial institutions.

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