Golden Copy Platform | Case Study for Pictet & Cie

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• GAIN for a golden copy based on several data feeds
• Derivation of unique prices
• Ad-hoc opening of new instruments

By the end of 2004 Pictet & Cie decided to implement the GAIN reference data management platform as a central data hub for securing the data quality in feeding its entire back office environment. The initial goal of the project was an integration based on three feeds, ie Telekurs VDF (Valor Data Feed), Reuters DataScope and Bloomberg DataLicense, in order to increase the quality of the back office security data management and the connected daily, largely manual, processes.

Now GAIN handles the central data enrichment and the feeding of Pictet & Cie's core banking application Avaloq and other applications and processes.



Golden copy as principal motivation
In order to speed up the implementation time, Pictet & Cie and AIM Software decided to enter a very close partnership to standardize the reference data management throughout the bank. The final objective of the project was the creation of a central security master file or golden copy with interfaces to several data feeds.

A further demand was the "ad hoc" straight through feeding of back office applications with data for opening new instruments and mutating existing data.

"After evaluating several solutions on the market we chose GAIN because of AIM's expertise in the integration of financial data feeds, especially of the Telekurs VDF. We were looking for an advanced and open solution which could use pricing and basic data information from Telekurs, Reuters and Bloomberg to create and manage a golden copy," says Christophe Ansermoz, Project Manager at Pictet & Cie.

Large amount of instruments requires data scrubbing
As Pictet & Cie relies on multiple data sources, the data had to be combined, filtered and partially enhanced. Golden copy management platforms such as GAIN help to reduce potentially error-prone and time-consuming manual processes. GAIN handles the entire process from collecting, cleansing, reformatting, validating and consolidating the data to prepare it for business use.

The most challenging part in a golden copy project is, on the one hand, to maximize the automation by providing automatic data scrubbing and, on the other hand, combining this with intuitive tools for manual exception handling and validation for speeding up the inevitable remaining final user decisions.

Comprehensive solution covers Pictet & Cie's needs
GAIN covers the whole data management workflow at Pictet & Cie, from an automatic or manual request up to the straight-through export of the prices and basic data in any format to connected back office or front office applications. GAIN provides a step-by-step approach for data loading and preparation, validation and distribution of financial data from 15 of the world's leading commercial data feeds as well as from proprietary sources (eg bank internal data). GAIN accompanies all these processes by monitoring functionality and an intuitive user interface.

As shown above, before creating the final golden copy, the data is passed through a staging area, containing the full range of raw data of all supported data feeds in an optimized storage structure. The cleansing, checking or application of rules takes place during the transformation of the data from the staging area into the golden copy. Target systems can be supplied by data from both the staging area and the golden copy.

Ad hoc opening of securities
GAIN supports an ad hoc/intra-day opening of securities. Thus, GAIN automatically identifies whether the data is already available in the golden copy or if it has to be fetched from a provider. If necessary, the data is then requested in a synchronous process from the data provider. Thereafter it takes Pictet & Cie only a few minutes to open new instruments directly in their core banking application, Avaloq. GAIN can act both as a master, handling all user interactions, or a slave that will be triggered by the target application.

Prices from multiple sources at different times
GAIN's pricing process covers every single aspect for deriving a unique best price per asset-currency combination for the back office. By applying automatic rules defined by the bank, an improved data quality and a swift validation of price data can be achieved at Pictet & Cie.



The pricing module of GAIN is based on an open and flexible architecture, allowing for the receipt of data from Telekurs Financial, Reuters and Bloomberg and other feeds at different time intervals. Financial data frequently proves to be inconsistent in quality, content and format. The pricing process addresses this issue by using the comprehensive tools of the GAIN platform to identify and eliminate suspect data. Data can be manipulated by using GAIN workflows which can easily be added through the workflow management module.

"AIM's solution allows us to comprehensively automate our back office data management processes. We are able to improve our data quality while having interfaces to several data feed providers and target applications," concludes Christophe Ansermoz.


About Pictet & Cie
Founded in 1805 in Geneva, Pictet & Cie is today Switzerland's largest private bank, and one of the premier independent asset management specialists in Europe, with over CHF 317 billion in assets under management and custody as at end of March 2006.