GAIN for Integration of FTID Price and Corporate Actions Data

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• Full automation of the processing of reference data
• Significant improvements in operational efficiencies
• Reduced implementation time

As a large forex, derivatives and equities trading house, ODL Securities required a data integration platform that could support the direct input of FTID's FTS ExShare data into an Oracle infrastructure. Together with its UK partner TraderTeam, AIM Software addressed this request with a solution that will allow ODL Securities to maintain the security master fi le and to process security data, closing prices and corporate actions automatically.

AIM Software's all-in-one solution for reference data management and risk management, GAIN, enables institutions to process efficiently the world's leading batch and real-time data feeds and to derive comprehensive risk assessments from them. Access to more than 15 financial data feeds, including FT Interactive Data, consequently improves the quality of the input data and hence the calculations based on this data.

Automatic data feeding to reduce errors
Bill Newton, Director at ODL Securities Limited, states:"Before deploying GAIN we maintained the security master file mainly manually. By automating the processing of our security data and price data we could reduce errors to a minimum level and could realize significant improvements in operational efficiencies."

TraderTeam Limited, AIM Software’s UK partner, implemented the solution within only four weeks and ensures individual support for an optimised quality assurance. "The turnkey delivery of AIM Software's reference data management solution enables customers dramatically to reduce implementation time and to focus on their core competencies," concludes John Prior, Director at TraderTeam.

AIM Software and FT Interactive Data teamed up
AIM Software has been working with FT Interactive Data for several years. The collaboration between the international market data vendor and AIM provides an opportunity to off er a powerful best of breed package, facilitating access to FT Interactive Data's wide range of content through AIM Software's flagship data management platform GAIN.

FT Interactive Data provides global pricing, including evaluations, dividend, corporate action and descriptive information via GAIN, which offers a wide range of functions for the automatic processing of data feeds.

"GAIN as a scalable platform allows for a stepwise integration and helps our customers to benefit from cost savings and reduced maintenance costs in their daily management of reference data," explains Josef Sommeregger, Business Development at AIM Software. "The depth of FT Interactive Data's offering, in combination with GAIN, enables firms to manage pricing, reference data and corporate actions data comprehensively."

GAIN manages full data lifecycle
The modular and scalable GAIN platform combines cleansing and scrubbing of reference data, pricing data and corporate actions with exception handling. In addition, GAIN off ers market, credit and operational risk management modules that can be activated on demand.

Based on GAIN, back office processes can be automated, eliminating the labour-intensive, error- and risk-prone manual intervention in data import and data processing. Extensive quality checks of the imported market data and portfolio data account for a substantial improvement in data accuracy for downstream systems.

GAIN provides much of the daily reference data management out-of-the-box. Its balanced blend between standardization and customization helps to reduce the overall costs of data administration. By consolidating data feeds and centralising the data management process, GAIN helps to realize significant improvements in operational efficiencies and is able to deliver critical business information in a timely fashion. The core advantage of the platform is that it is a turnkey solution and therefore easy to implement, and easy to deploy; the initial installation can be done in a matter of days.

Financial institutions are becoming more selective regarding their data sources, moving towards "golden copy" solutions in order to compare and consolidate data from several sources. "Many companies, which in the past have not had fully automated data management solutions for managing data from commercial and internal data sources, are moving to deploy one. And nearly all bigger financial institutions are moving towards implementing central data repositories, or golden copies," concludes Sommeregger.

About FT Interactive Data | www.ftinteractivedata.com
FT Interactive Data’s services include:

• Daily evaluations for more than 2.5 million active fixed income issues
• Data regarding "hard-to-value" unlisted fixed income instruments
• "Hard-to-get" information from emerging markets
• Fixed income portfolio analytical software
• Independent credit analysis

About ODL Securities Ltd. | www.odls.com
ODL Securities Limited is a London based forex, derivatives and equities trading house. Established in 1994, the company was founded to provide a bespoke service in exchangetraded derivatives. It has now evolved to offer online and telephone trading in foreign exchange and contracts for diff erence (CFDs) in addition to equities, futures, options and commodities. ODL Securities Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority and is a member of the London Stock Exchange and the Euronext.LIFFE.