Data Enrichment
Valuation data is relatively simple – a policy number, a few ISINs, the number of units, and some prices. Moving valuation data from source (Investment Platforms) to end point (Solution Providers) is relatively straight forward. The problem is that Solution Providers increasingly want transaction level data – to show the true investment performance of a portfolio or investment over time, or to report in a MiFID II compliant matter.
Transaction level data is infinitely more complex. Investment platforms typically have upwards of 200 different transaction codes to categorise individual transactions. New transaction codes are regularly created meaning that each platforms’ set of 200+ transaction codes is ever changing. The behaviour of these transaction codes (inflows or outflows) needs to be understood for the data to be correctly interpreted. Datasets have to be flexible to accommodate the occasional correction of a historical transaction (errors do happen!).
Given that a single investment policy that has been in existence for 20 years might have up to 4,000 individual transactions over its history, reconciliation can be extremely challenging. But reconciliation is absolutely essential if wealth managers are to provide accurate reporting to their clients. Solution Providers should not need to do that reconciliation process themselves; they should have confidence that the data they receive is ‘report ready’.
And that’s exactly what FINIO does. FINIO runs three processes on the data its receives from platforms: it enriches the data (missing prices, SEDOLs etc.), it reconciles every investment over the course of its history, and it normalises the data so that one Investment Platform’s data is identical to another Investment Platform’s data when delivered to the Solution Provider.