EDM is a technology and operations strategy that will consolidate data, and the data management function, to better manage the distribution of critical data to business applications.

This collaboration is a direct response to the continuous and increasing compliance demands placed upon financial institutions. As a result of this alliance, a CounterpartyLink Connector will be created to enable firms to maintain accurate hierarchy relationship information in a single trusted repository, fully supported by an audit trail to meet regulatory and compliance obligations. CounterpartyLink will deliver legal entity data to GoldenSource. CounterpartyLink's niche data focus gives it an unparalleled accuracy and update speed.

Financial institutions typically manage counterparty data internally. This manual, time consuming process is costly and prone to error. With the increasing pressures of new anti-money laundering regulations under the Patriot Act and other Know Your Customer initiatives, as well as the risk management and process control implications of Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley, firms are forced to not only maintain accurate, linkable data, but they must also demonstrate that they have an auditable, documented data management process in place. In addition to the data quality and auditable information provided by CounterpartyLink, the hierarchy relationship information it provides is critical for credit risk management and regulatory requirements.

"Counterparty data is often overlooked", says Tim Lind, senior vice president product strategy, GoldenSource. "By developing a connector to CounterpartyLink, GoldenSource will provide an easy to implement means for capturing accurate counterparty data which will enable financial institutions to manage compliance and credit risk more effectively. We have found that our customer's vision of EDM extends beyond securities data and must incorporate the ability to consolidate data on legal entities that act as counterparties in the trading process."

CounterpartyLink principally collects data from primary sources (e.g. regulatory or supervisory bodies such as the SEC in the U.S.). Where a secondary source is required, CounterpartyLink confirms data accuracy through two separate sources before adding it to an entity record. All data is rigorously verified and continually updated for corporate actions and other events affecting the data.

"We are very enthusiastic about working with GoldenSource and helping to provide an easy, fully integrated way for their client base to receive CounterpartyLink data," added Christoph Lammersdorf, CounterpartyLink's managing director. "The availability of entity data that has the level of quality and the documented processes to meet compliance requirements is one of today's top critical issues for the financial services industry.

CounterpartyLink's stringent data collection and maintenance processes and the product's compliance-driven features, combined with the enterprise data management solutions provided by GoldenSource, will provide GoldenSource customers with an excellent "plug and play" solution for customer data compliance."