AIM | APSYS Interfaces

The data management platform of AIM Software, GAIN Data Management, enables the automation of the import of a variety of financial data feeds into the banking application APSYS. The daily updates of security prices, FX rates or income & revenue data as well as the automatic creation of new securities are only some examples towards straight through data integration into APSYS.

Best of breed solution reduces risks

AIM Software, one of the leading data management solution providers, nurtures a long standing relationship with APSYS (SunGard) in the field of automatic data feed processing. With the support of GAIN Data Management, AIM Software offers a comprehensive range of ready-made data feed interfaces to APSYS which can be further customized on demand to meet specific needs.

Martin Buchberger, Head of Marketing & Sales at AIM Software, stressed one of the main motives for this cooperation: "Since we saw the success of APSYS in the market, this partnership is essential for us to guarantee the support of our clients using APSYS and will help to reduce project risks and costs for the growing APSYS user base already serviced by AIM Software."

AIM Software cooperates with some of the major APSYS banks such as Privatbank IHAG and Wegelin & Co, which also act as pilot clients for new developments. Thereby the AIM | APSYS interface guarantees a future proof and constantly evolving platform for data management, fully aligned with the evolution of APSYS.

Focus on core competency enhances functionality

A key feature for APSYS is both the ability of GAIN Data Management to connect to a multitude of datafeeds and to manage the storage, versioning and mapping of the data in multiple ways.

"A strong factor in our decision to award AIM Software with the project was the already existing interfacing experience of GAIN with the APSYS III banking application." Daniel Albisser, IHAG

APSYS manages the delivered security data while the GAIN platform covers more client specific needs and acts as a data hub and interpreter in the background. The user does not have to leave APSYS to handle all requests. In addition, AIM Software can now provide extended added value of its data management platform to APSYS clients, including intra-day instrument openings, routing of data feed requests and the scrubbing of several data sources.

With the release 1.10, APSYS defined a new import interface for basic data and event data that enables GAIN to feed even more data into APSYS. The AIM | APSYS interface is now capable of importing all data to automatically create new securities, to update income and revenue data as well as pricing information for securities, currencies, interests and indices daily. This gives APSYS a competitive advantage over other solutions which still require manual input in this area.

The usage of GAIN Data Management

GAIN Data Management is an All-in-One data management platform that enables the user to access and process messages from a multitude of the world’s leading back-office and real-time data feeds in an automated way.

With its automation, routing, reporting and onscreen display features, the GAIN Data Management eases the daily data management effort for feeding APSYS considerably. GAIN Data Management takes care that all imported data is checked prior to export to APSYS. Therefore, for importing data from data feed providers into APSYS automatically, GAIN Data Management takes care of all necessary processing steps:

• Request + Download
• Communication | Data Conversion | Archiving
• Automation + Task Scheduling
• Metadata Management
• Mapping + Reformatting
• Workflow Management
• Export into APSYS

For the time being there are ready-made interfaces available for Telekurs VDF and Reuters DataScope. Based on the multi-data-feed capability of GAIN, further AIM | APSYS interfaces based on other data feeds can be supported.

Case Study: Privatbank IHAG Zurich

In July 2002, the Swiss Privatbank IHAG Zurich (IHAG) decided to use GAIN Data Management with the goal of increasing the quality of its back office security management.

"We chose GAIN with the purpose of using corporate action reports and pricing information in an existing environment, without changing the software in use. Furthermore, we were able to move to an automated environment, including the opening of new securities as well as to undertake further steps towards automated processing of security data." Daniel Albisser, IHAG

The purpose of GAIN is to download, convert and manage the Telekurs VDF data which is delivered in EDIFACT format and to transform the data in the format of APSYS. The requested security data is limited to those instruments that are active in IHAG's portfolio. After the download, which is fully controlled by GAIN, the security data is processed, preparing it for transfer into APSYS.

In addition to the daily delivery of Telekurs VDF end-of-day valuation prices, fiscal prices and end-of-year prices, GAIN provides a full corporate actions reporting. The daily processing of all relevant events is thereby ensured at IHAG.

Automatic creation of new securities

With APSYS III 1.10, IHAG will use the GAIN module for the automatic creation of new securities covering the full range of the necessary basic data elements.

Whenever a bank adds a new instrument to its portfolio, this instrument must first be opened in the banking application. For this purpose, APSYS through GAIN demands a set of fields which so far have been entered manually by an employee in the back office department who will have to search for the data in various sources. GAIN Data Management now takes care of the automatic processing and mapping of all required data, and ensures that all imported data is checked prior to export to APSYS, resulting in significant time and cost savings for the bank and also eliminating the risk of flawed inputs. A further increase of data quality is achieved through automatically created control lists.

Finally the back office user has the option to verify the resulting data within APSYS before importing them into the APSYS database.

"We see this best of breed partnership as a trend where solution providers will combine their know-how and expertise for extending the reach of their products and services, while focusing on their core competencies." Martin Buchberger, AIM Software

Workflow for the creation of a security

Details of the AIM | APSYS security creation interface

• Automatic creation of any security, except options and futures
• Approximately 150 basic data elements are delivered from the following data categories:

• Static information of securities incl. TIS value (EUSD data)

• Security identifiers

• Security issuer attributes

• Last revenue payment + next planned revenue

• Extended information delivered by the interface

• Tax information for combined instruments
• Underlying securities of derivatives

• "Final reimbursement" event for a bond

• Security Events (e.g. (premature) redemption | conversion | further events possible)

• User-defined fields (on demand)
• The user

• opens and manipulates data directly in APSYS. GAIN runs in the background.

• may open a security at any time (interactive mode).

• may check the imported data manually (in "APSYS Monitor") before loading into APSYS database.

Daily refreshes of security data

By using the APSYS mass update interface, AIM is also able to offer an automatic daily update of the basic data of securities. The data fields correspond to those from the security creation interface. Within APSYS, the client is able to flag which fields should be updated on a daily basis and which should remain unchanged (e.g. security name).

Furthermore an automatic daily update of the income types dividends and coupons can be achieved.

Details of the AIM | APSYS security income & revenue interface

• The AIM | APSYS interface updates the APSYS database with the announcements about the next revenue of the securities.
• For shares: the next dividend
• For bonds: the next coupon and the following ones with the respective effective date. Furthermore, bonds with floating rates or irregular periods (short or long coupons) can be processed.
• The update frequency is customisable depending on the bank's strategy.

All available AIM | APSYS interfaces at a glance

These interfaces are continuously extended and adapted to new APSYS functions in the course of client projects.

The following interfaces are available for Telekurs and from APSYS V1.09 upwards:

• Security End-of-Day Prices (Valuation Prices)
• Security Fiscal/End-of-Year Rates
• Interest Rates (Telekurs and Reuters)
• Index Rates (Telekurs and Reuters)
• Currency (FX) Rates (Telekurs and Reuters)
• EU Savings Tax (EUSD)
• EU tax definition data (Initialisation)
• TIS (Taxable Income per Share) prices
• TID | Special reports
  

The following interfaces are available for Telekurs starting
with APSYS V1.10:

• Security Creation
• Security Updates
• Security Income & Revenue

Configuration options of the interface

• Easy client-specific parameterisation
• Adjustments of mappings between VDF codes and APSYS internal IDs by using dynamic mapping tables
• Extended configuration possibilities through parameterised scripts

GAIN in addition offers the following optional functions

• Cleansing
• Exception Handling
• Reconciliation / Scrubbing
• Workflow Management
• Reporting, Titlebulletin™ replacement and more

APSYS clients serviced by AIM Software

• Adler & Co.
• BBVA Privanza Suiza
• Gonet & Cie
• Hypo Alpe-Adria
• Hypo Investment
• Nomura (Switzerland)
• Privatbank IHAG Zurich
• Société Bancaire Privée SBP
• Swissfirst
• Sydbank (Switzerland)
• Volksbank AG Vaduz
• Wegelin & Co.

Moreover, AIM Software services an additional 90 non-APSYS clients in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and other countries.

Contact:

AIM Software
Christian Trnka
AIM Professional Services
Tel: +43 1 5124652
www.aimsoftware.com