Commerzbank has upgraded its Asset Control AC Plus data management platform to gain extended audit capabilities, increase functionality around the creation and display of yield curves, and benefit from the company’s Risk Data Manager component, which was introduced in June and provides better risk controls than were previously available on the platform.

This development is the latest in a long relationship between Commerzbank and Asset Control that began in the late 1990s when the bank needed an independent market data store to feed its risk systems in order to comply with a market risk amendment to Basel I. This requirement and an increasing focus on risk led the bank to look for a technology platform and partner that it could work with to establish strong data management processes. It chose Asset Control to fill the role and the platform has since evolved to become the core of the bank’s Market Data Depository Service (MDDS).

Christian Knapp, vice president of market data at Commerzbank, explains: “MDDS provides a range of services to our users. Its primary responsibility is the research, analysis, sourcing, prioritisation and delivery of market data to systems downstream. It is the central source for near-time, independent and validated market data and supports all methods and market data processes for market and counterparty risk calculation.”

Commerzbank receives market data from a number of providers using 10 different interfaces. The data covers equities and indices, bonds and futures, interest rates, volatilities and ratings, and is requested on a daily basis in a variety of formats by about 20 systems in the bank’s risk, finance and business divisions globally. MDDS is responsible for ensuring that clients get the data they need in a timely fashion and is based on the Asset Control data management platform that allows the bank to store raw data and calculate and store derived and statistical market data based on the bank’s own methods and processes.

Knapp says: “Asset Control is the model for different data sources and the way in which risk is calculated. It provides snapshots of the raw market data for key time zones across all asset classes, as well as historical data for risk calculations and derived data. It also enables us to centralise and manage daily automatic and manual validation processes.”

The benefits of MDDS and the Asset Control platform for the bank include regulatory compliance, improved ability to process an increasing number of audits, and the ability to address issues of data timeliness, quality and cost. The platform also allows the bank to calculate exposures using consistent data and provides details on data flow that are used to optimise costs.

Noting Asset Control’s ability to provide the quality, timeliness and flexibility required for risk data management in today’s financial markets, Knapp concludes: “We will continue to focus on optimising the quality and timeliness of market data that is used throughout our organisation. Asset Control has been part of this process for over 15 years and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.”