Shortcuts to Customer and Counterparty Data Management:
Although legal entity data services is still a relatively small market, vendors are seeing rapid growth within it. Pending regulatory deadlines through 2008 are driving a 200% average annual growth rate in spending in this market...
According to Adam Honoré , author of the report, "To remain compliant, to control risk, and to understand their customers, firms need to clean their customer and counterparty data. Given the current propensity to outsource the 'plumbing', or anything that does not create a proprietary competitive advantage, data cleansing services are in the right market at the right time." The analyst adds, "Vendors need to be willing partners with their customers regarding regulatory inquiries and compliance initiatives."
Credit Dimensions Revealed as Reuters’ Counterparty Data Partner ,November 2006
Reuters confirms it is working with Credit Dimensions to bring to market its counterparty data service, now scheduled to launch in the Q1/Q2 timeframe next year. Kevin Bradshaw, global head of Enterprise Information at Reuters, says the vendor is in advanced discussions with several major bulge bracket firms both in Europe and the US which are “playing an active part in shaping our service as it comes to market”.
Of Credit Dimensions he says: “They bring additional high quality data analysis capacity to bear, which means we can meet our customer’s demand for getting the service to market quickly, and enhance it faster. They are a very aligned partner; the rigour we ordinarily put behind our data sourcing processes is reflected in full throughout their organization. They are a great partner to deal with, acting as a true extension of our capabilities.”
CreditDimensions Readies Matching Updates Tuesday, May 02, 2006
CreditDimensionsTM
A release scheduled for the end of April will provide a more optimized version of the software engine, a better matching screen, and an on-demand counterparty detail service, according to the vendor. The system is used by firms to capture, normalize and cross-reference market, reference and rating data, collate it in a central repository and generate reports.
In a release scheduled for production in the summer, the vendor will expand the number of APIs and web services to make the engine more accessible to other systems, such as counterparty management or default probability systems.
“We are exposing more of our services in the form of APIs to our clients.” says Gaurav Malik, business partner at CreditDimentions. The changes also mean that users will be able to run the software in one location and access it via systems at other locations worldwide, Malik says.
CDI.MatchPro is mainly aimed at enterprise risk management and IT departments responsible for the generation and maintenance of counterparty databases.
Striving for performance led excellence, ebusinessware proudly announces the inclusion of new projects in the group's fold. Keeping alive the tradition of multi-technology platforms, the group continues to surge ahead with more state-of-the-art and innovative projects.
November 2005
ebusinessware group company Credit Dimensions’ extensive domain experience in client reference data and operational experience in data management once again paved the way for a new project. With nearly $10 trillion in assets under custody and $1.5 trillion under management, this client, a world leader in financial services, showed confidence in us for their Data Management Solutions. The project comprises Data Verification and Maintenance. This will be followed up with a software licensing agreement in the event that the client wishes to bring the software in-house and integrate it with our core data management infrastructure. The dataset, of approximately 17000 records, includes investment managers & advisors, banks, bank branches, mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, institutional funds, corporates etc.
October 2005
Successful completion of its project entailing automated portfolio monitoring, trend-analysis and client service, paves the way for a second round of challenges for ebusinessware. As a follow-up to the success, the Phase II of this project—comprising maintenance and enhancements—has been awarded by the client. The new modules to be developed in this phase will enable the client to enhance its tracking systems to provides services like data processing specially in tracking portfolio, automatic portfolio management, reporting, on-demand analysis, trend analysis, exception reporting—all designed for any security types. The client’s requirement to adhere to safety regulations in the stock market underlines the business logic in the new module.
Challenge in the project arises from the turnaround time specified by the client and the team is all set to meet it. The technology platform comprises Python, Zope Open Source Server and MS SQL.
October 2005
ebusinessware successfully completes development of a strategy consulting software, the first of its kind. After releasing its Version 1.0, to the client, ebusinessware is all set for repeating the pioneering performance in a new set of tasks envisaged by a satisfied client. Focusing on ongoing support for the released version, the project team is also gearing up for enhancement of existing functionality and development of new functionality under the Second Phase of the project. Divided into two streams, this phase includes.
Enhancements to Version 1 software; QA on the latest stable release; Analysis and defect fixing
New Modules Development beginning with requirements gathering, analysis, design and development. This will result in the Version 2.0 release of the software. The technology platform comprises an object-oriented Smart Client Application using C#, MS SQL Server, .Net user and custom controls with the enhanced support of web services to facilitate the interaction of the SQL Server with database.
September 2005
ebusinessware has emerged as the solution provider for a leading global investment bank yet again. The bank has a database, for maintaining credit spread curves for reference entities, which is currently maintained by the Research Department in London. The database is used for multiple reasons—closing values on credit curves, export of credit curves for submission to the price validation service and support for research models and reports.
The solution in this case involves the transfer of the responsibility of application support from the research function in London to the bank’s New York facility, ensuring that all New York facility's technical standards are adhered to. The project aims at improving the data model of the database and also at adding some new features to improve the business process flow.
Planned over two phases, the first phase of the project entails "as-is" migration of the system from the research group in London to the New York facility. This phase also proposes to include review of the existing data model and to make changes to better reflect current business usage. This phase will be completed by mid-January 2006. The second phase will involve activities like architectural enhancements—addition of a data management layer and business related enhancements and will be completed by May 2006.
The system comprises a main Sybase database (V 12.5.3), which is maintained and managed by use of database stored procedures, database triggers and Unix scripts that are run through CRON jobs. There is a web interface that is a PHP (V 4.3.0) application running on Apache (V 1.3.26) server that directly interacts with the underlying Sybase database. Some XL based applications also insert and update data in the database. The system gets external feeds (e.g. from Bloomberg) and also provides feeds to external systems.
August 2005
Successful completion of its project entailing automated portfolio monitoring, trend-analysis and client service, paves the way for a second round of challenges for ebusinessware. As a follow-up to the success, the Phase II of this project—comprising maintenance and enhancements—has been awarded by the client. The new modules to be developed in this phase will enable the client to enhance its tracking systems to provide services like data processing specially in tracking portfolio, automatic portfolio management, reporting, on-demand analysis, trend analysis, exception reporting—all designed for any security types. The client’s requirement to adhere to safety regulations in the stock market underlines the business logic in the new module.
Challenge in the project arises from the turnaround time specified by the client and the team is all set to meet it. The technology platform comprises Python, Zope Open Source Server and MS SQL.
July 2005
The months of June and July have been very eventful for us at ebusinessware with several successful project deliveries completed and multiple new projects added to our fold. Our endeavor to improve our processes has also met with success during this phase. The following projects provided the opportunity to improve upon our processes in delivery as well as project management.
1. The Risk Management project for a leading US investment bank has been put into parallel run. It has been very well accepted by the client. This successful delivery has resulted in a new project being awarded to ebusinessware, almost three times the size of the original project. We would like to congratulate the team for its hard work and persistence.
2. The Forms Development project for a leading insurance client, undertaken by a very young team, is reaping huge appreciation from the client for the innovative ideas and quality being delivered. We look forward to the completion of the project in right time.
3. The project team for the vendor collection project has also delivered its code as per delivery plan. We expect to take it through the acceptance phase in the coming months.
4. We were also able to integrate E.piphany in the client's environment after some hard work by the teams at both the end. It required a lot of coordination and the team came out successful.
5. The Wealth Management enrollment project team delivered its first phase on time. The code is now being integrated with UBS applications.
June 2005
ebusinessware’s business association with this client dates back to almost half a decade. A leader in key segments of the global credit risk transfer market, this client, with its experienced management team, innovative strategy and significant financial and technological resources, is uniquely positioned to play an important role in this large and rapidly growing market. The client offers its counterparties the highest possible ratings (AAA/Aaa) as well as outstanding execution.
In the month of June, the client entrusted its hedge funds project to ebusinessware. ebusinessware's challenge is to build the trading system to encapsulate the complete life cycle for a hedge fund investment for the client. The technology platform comprises Java, J2EE and Oracle.
This company's second project, also signed up in the month June 2005, entails the building up of a complete Credit Risk Capital Model in an object-oriented framework.
The Credit Risk Capital Model application is a Monte Carlo Simulation model (the Model) designed to determine whether the amount of capital available to the Company at any given point in time meets Standard & Poor’s AAA counterparty credit rating requirements, as well as respective target ratings for any of its capital structure components. The Model calculates the probability of a company’s default (bankruptcy) event occurring as a result of the cumulative net cash outflows exceeding available capital as defined in Operating Policies and Guidelines and measured as a function of credit risk capital. The minimum amount of required credit risk capital corresponds to the amount that results in a probability of bankruptcy equal to the AAA benchmark probability. The technology platform comprises C++.
June 2005
One of ebusinessware’s oldest clients, this company has had several projects developed by ebusinessware. Some more are still under development. As an extension of its trust, the client has now come up with yet another project. Scheduled for the next four months, the project involves migration of around 800 forms of the existing application from Adobe Version 4 to Version 7. The client uses these forms for data gathering and final sign offs in the sale of its products. This time the forms from various business divisions of the client have to undergo this migration. ebusinessware's challenge is to facilitate this migration without affecting the current functionality of the Application. In addition the project team, has to explore and innovate features of the present forms by adding signature fields, Adobe Scripts, sectional signing and by making use of Batch Process. The new features are to be added in Protable Documents and Electronic Signature Platform and regular error reports sent to the client. Subsequently, the testing and integration of all the forms with diverse divisions will add to the challenge.Technologies such as Acrobat 7, Electronic Signature Platform, Java and VC++ comprise the development platform.
May 2005
An existing client of ebusinessware, a renowned global banking group has firmed up its third project with ebusinessware beginning May 05. This Application is aimed at processing incoming e-mail quotes for credit spread information. The derivatives counter party team at the bank receives thousands of e-mails daily from a variety of brokers/dealers, carrying trade information of credit-spreads and bonds for various counter-parties. The bank requires a team of five to manually transfer the trade information from emails and to another system. This information is used for trend analysis and risk management by traders.
ebusinessware's challenge is to develop an engine that will handle all types of email formats, extract trade information and automate the whole process thus, saving time, efforts and improving overall efficiency. The Engine is designed with high degree of scalability and, as a result newer email formats can be plugged in without any change in the core Engine.
The application is equipped with web based user interface to control engine configuration and generate custom reports. Technologies such as Java, Java Mail API, Struts Framework, and Hibernate comprise the development platform.
April 2005
A UK-based financial services client, providing investment banks with high-performance, high-volume trading and risk management applications across the spectrum of asset-classes, firms up its third project with ebusinessware.
A Java J2EE Hibernate project using the JBPM API to implement the workflow, the challenge in this project lies in systems integration with an added thrust on data reconciliation. ebusinessware’s versatility lies in the ease with which its systems adapt to the client’s architecture.
April 2005
A leading global bank reposes total faith once again in ebusinessware’s expertise. The bank’s technology group, which is the direct client, needs to change its earlier practice of performing trades using an excel sheet interface. ebusinessware meets the challenge to convert this interface into a relational database interface and implement reporting functions using standard reporting tools (Actuate). A role-based authorization of the application has already been implemented in addition to the auditing feature for the database, which will be extensively used for trade/transaction history management.
Java, J2EE, Hibernate, JMS, Oracle and J Integra comprise the technology platform of this project.
This client’s second Application is aimed at processing incoming e-mail quotes for credit spread information. The derivatives counterparty team at the bank receives 2,500 e-mails daily from a variety of brokers/dealers with credit-spread information for various counterparties. ebusinessware’s application will enable compilation of the final spread values for all the counterparties in the portfolio to mark to the market on a daily basis.
Challenges in the application include the ability to design with flexibility and extensibility to accommodate a large variety of mail formats.
Technologies such as Java, Regex API, Struts, Hibernate comprise the development platform.
March 2005
A leading global insurance company’s project with ebusinessware — development of an Electronic Assistant application — enters a new phase. The application enables browser-based data capture and is used by the agents of the company to record all pre-issue policy information.
The application takes the agent and customer through a series of screens/questions. After all the questions are answered, the application presents the agent/user with all the appropriate pre-issue forms, pre-populated with the data captured during the data capture phase. The customer then signs the forms receives a copy from the agent.
Data warehouse base, JavaScript, HTML, JAVA, VC++, Adobe, Jacob, Insurance comprise the technology platform for the project. The current challenge in the project is to:
• Migrate from JRE 1.4.1-05 to 1.4.2-06 05.
March 2005
A leading bank of Switzerland enrolls the services of ebusinessware in two simultaneous projects. Involving high-end technologies in J2EE, WSAS, MQ Workflow, MQ Server, DB2 and CICS, the first project is aimed at facilitating the enrollment of wealth management clients.
The second project being developed for this client is aimed at smoothening the rough edges in the Vendor Collection System. A J2EE, Struts, DB2 project, the solution will automate the vendor collection system of the bank. The proposed system will calculate fees for mutual fund families. The system will also provide facilities for generating invoices and reporting to monitor the metrics of fees generated.
February 2005
A global company’s project in promotional activities for its clients provides ebusinessware a unique challenge to design and stabilize the promotion site for several categories of products. The technology platform for the project extends to Java, J2EE, Struts, JSP, SQL Server etc.
January 2005
The beginning of the year witnesses the launch of a project entailing Automated Portfolio Monitoring, Trend-Analysis and client service based on the analysis. This ebusinessware client provides services like—data processing specially in tracking portfolio, automatic portfolio management, reporting, on-demand analysis, trend analysis, exception reporting—all designed for any security types.
The Challenge in the project is to conduct a hacking exercise and breach security and then, provide a wrapper to the application which is more robust and secure.
The technology platform for the project includes Python, Zope Open Source Server and MS SQL.
January 2005
ebusinessware enters into an outsourcing project to maintain the OBR or the OutBrokerage Repository Applications for a leading insurance client. The project includes review of the current development procedures, configuration procedures, and CMM level processes.
The challenge in this engagement is to enable a transition and take over the core support for OBR systems from four existing team members.
The technology platform comprises Oracle, SQL Server, Visual Basic, XML, XSL etc.
Fourth Quarter of 2004
ebusinessware breaks ground with a major strategy-consulting client based in New York.
Engaged for a long duration project entailing phased releases, the project team developed an object-oriented Smart Client Application using C#, MS SQL Server, .Net user and custom controls with the enhanced support of web services to facilitate the interaction of the SQL Server with database.
Third Quarter 2004
A leading insurance company's project for campaign management through email provides ebusinessware the platform to leverage its expertise in this field. The ebusinessware team firms up the technical requirements for a successful deployment of the Campaign Management by Email and Analytic Services Module a.k.a. Marketing Module within a short span.
This project provides a closed-loop solution for targeting, planning, executing, and analyzing multi-channel campaigns. Campaign Management for E-Mail allows users to create personalized, permission-based e-mail campaigns that communicate with customers.
Analytic Services provides web based interface to analyze customer information with OLAP and data mining capabilities for profiling, forecasting, segmentation, clustering, valuation, response modeling, cross-selling etc. The Technology used is Java J2EE.
Second Quarter 2004
ebusinessware assists a financial services major in the credit derivatives market to develop a comprehensive risk management system. Strict adherence to ebusinessware’s policy of innovating solutions enables deliveries to meet evolving client requirements over the years.
Leading technologies such as J2EE, VC++, VB, VBA and Oracle have been the basis of the system’s development and the sustained innovations in its solutions have earned laurels for ebusinessware.
First Quarter 2004
An OWB, VCS, J2EE struts, Oracle Discoverer, excel VBA based project is unveiled at ebusinessware to catering to the needs of a major insurance player. In its second phase, the project ebusinessware is devising solutions for the annuities division for the calculation of the compensation of the sales force.
Additionally, reporting facilities are being provided to analyze the warehouse sales data. In the first phase of the project, a warehouse-based solution was delivered to the client.
Launch of ebusinessware's Reference Data Utility in 2003
CreditDimensions, an ebusinessware group company, launches the pilot project for the first ever reference data management utility.
Using technologies such as Java, JSP, Oracle and PL/SQL, the pilot yields the first reference data management utility tool for data verification, enrichment and validation within a year that is extensively used by investment banks.
