Penson Financial Services Canada is the first Canadian clearing firm to sign up for GCA VS. The service provides a centralized source of corporate action announcements for equities and fixed-income instruments traded in more than 160 countries in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas. The service provides the broadest corporate actions coverage of any service in the world.

"As a leading Canadian carrying broker, we have an absolute need to receive high quality, fast and accurate corporate actions for Canadian securities, as well as securities in the U.S. and many other countries" said Terry Bourne, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Penson Financial Services Canada. "With GCA Validation Service, we'll be able to take advantage of multiple vendor feeds that are checked against each other, along with the resources and experience of DTCC to help ensure the accuracy of the data. We expect it will free up resources, allowing us to focus on other areas where we can add significant value for our clients."

"We are excited to have a large clearing firm like Penson sign onto the service, because it means the data will be shared by a number of firms that get clearing data through Penson," said James Femia, DTCC managing director and head of the Global Corporate Action business. "There is a definite movement in the industry to outsource global corporate action announcement information as a way to improve the data that firms get on corporate actions globally, while reducing their costs and risks."

Penson Financial Services Canada joins a growing number of other major global financial institutions and buy-side firms using the GCA VS, including Credit Suisse First Boston, JP Morgan Securities, Merrill Lynch, Raymond James, Abbey Financial Markets, First Clearing and UBS, among others.

GCA VS provides customers with worldwide coverage through service centers in Shanghai, London and New York. The service allows customers to outsource functions that are largely manual, costly and are not core competencies or competitive advantages for investment firms.