DTCC has embarked on a data management journey that will initially deliver a centralised data provisioning service called DTCC Data Products and later a Data-as-a-Service capability that will transform the way data is provisioned from fixed and custom feed delivery to on-demand data access.

DTCC Data Products is a response to client demand for more centralised, on-demand data provisioning that will that help firms meet regulatory demands, reduce risks, increase efficiency, gain better market insight, lower costs and provide greater transparency into business operations. DTCC services providing underlying data for DTCC Data Products include the Depository Trust Company, which manages asset services and corporate actions, the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation, the Global Trade Repository, which manages derivatives data, and the National Securities Clearing Corporation, which manages equities data.

Ron Jordan, chief data officer at DTCC, says centralised rather than bespoke data provisioning solutions will best meet the requirements of both DTCC participants and non-participants. He explains: “Clients are showing increasing interest in obtaining better access to certain DTCC information for analysis, risk and operational purposes. By centralising data provisioning and providing a single point of access, the service will help clients at every stage in the trade lifecycle.”

The single point of access to DTCC Data Products is a new data portal – www.dtccdata.com – that in the first instance will act as a signpost to other data products. For example, DTCC’s exchange traded funds (ETF) portal will continue to be available, but will also be linked to the Data Products portal.

Taking the opportunity to enhance its products as it consolidates data, DTCC has added a year of historical data to the ETF composition data it provides on a daily basis. It is also possible for customers to customise access to ETF data for the first time. Similarly, DTCC has linked its corporate actions product to the Data Products portal and is making its Depository Trust Company ISO 20022 corporate actions file, which was previously limited to DTCC participants, available to non-participants, allowing them to improve risk management and operational efficiency. The frequency at which the corporate actions file is updated has also been increased from daily to 14 times a day to provide a more real-time product.

While these data products will gradually be consolidated behind the central portal, the portal does include a user identification and password sign-in process that initially provides access to free DTCC Trade Information Warehouse reports covering data on credit default swaps. Most other data products carry a subscription fee.

Moving beyond the consolidation of DTCC data products and data provisioning, DTCC plans to introduce Data-as-a-Service this summer, initially offering fixed income data that can help firms get a better insight into risk and respond to regulatory data requirements. Jordan says: “Data-as-a-Service is about provisioning clearing, settlement and asset servicing data in more useful ways so that firms can use it more effectively and intelligently, adding value and gaining business benefits. It is the same data, but in a different format. We would love to be able to take terabytes of data that is sent to us by clients and allow the clients to select their own data outputs that would help them gain intelligence from the data without having to subscribe to reams of data.”

While most settlement, clearing and asset servicing data is delivered in flat files, a process that will continue, DTCC is exploring other means of provisioning the data, perhaps as customised files or through application programming interfaces that are being developed. Jordan comments: “We are not touching our clearing, settlement and asset servicing businesses and they will continue to operate as usual. DTCC Data Products and Data-as-a-Service will provide incremental value added services that firms can subscribe to if they want to.”

To achieve more agile data provisioning, DTCC has moved away from a mainframe-based environment and created a more distributed infrastructure including analytic tools that can be used to manipulate data in real time.