SmartStream Links to ByAllAccounts for Data Aggregation
May 26, 2010
SmartStream Technologies and ByAllAccounts have teamed up to integrate ByAllAccounts data aggregation platform with SmartStream’s licensed and hosted reconciliation service.
Instead of having to maintain direct feeds from custodian banks and other third parties and reformat and rekey data into their SmartStream reconciliation system, buy-side firms can have a single standardized and automated data feed flow into either SmartStream TLMOnDemand or TLM Reconciliations, says William Gates, senior vice president of SmartStream.
The ByAllAccounts data aggregation platform will transform the data received from multiple sources into SmartStream’s requirements. That means even if firms had a data aggregation platform they won’t have to do any additional coding to integrate their platform into SmartStream’s, says Ellen Dickau, executive vice president of engineering at ByAllAccounts in Woburn, Mass. The end result; firms can reduce their costs and operational risk involved with reconciliation.
Based in New York and London, SmartStream is one of the largest providers of reconciliation services; TMLOnDemand, a hosted service, and TLM Reconciliations, a licensed platform are used by more than 1,100 fund managers, banks and broker dealers. ByAllAccounts provides data aggregation services for over 800 financial firms but is best known in the wealth management space. The affiliation with SmartStream will extend its reach to institutional fund managers and custodian banks.
Fund managers and global custodian banks must reconcile or match the data on their own books with those of multiple service providers – namely custodian banks and subcustodians so they can provide their clients with accurate reports on their holdings, transaction activities and net asset valuations. That reconciliation is made far more difficult by the fact that firms must normalize data presented in different formats; asset managers often deal with dozens of custodian banks while a large custodian bank might work with dozens of subcustodians or local agents globally.
The data which must be reconciled daily includes information on positions, cash balances and securities transactions. Any errors in reconciliation can place the financial intermediary on the hook to make its client whole.
“Mid-tier and smaller buy-side firms struggle with improving efficiency in reconciliation operations due to the number of external sources housing portfolio and account data,” says Dayle Scher, research director for securities and investments at Tower Group in Needham, Mass. “Improvements in data aggregation can drive down costs as well as support operational controls provided by reconciliation applications.”
