The new product enables financial institutions to streamline and control the usage of reference data by spreadsheets or any application from any place in the organization. This innovative solution allows investment managers, risk and compliance officers to flexibly access market data from spreadsheets, while enabling full control over data usage.

Exporting market data into spreadsheets is a popular way of using trading terminals, and users have often leveraged this feature to solve their daily challenges. The problem is that exporting data breaches the data vendor’s usage agreement in many cases. Non-compliant usages include sharing market data in a spreadsheet file with a colleague, storing snapshots of time series, and running a risk model in a spreadsheet based on fresh market data.

“One out of every four terminals is installed on the desks of non-trading persons such as the back-office or risk, compliance, and other middle-office functions. This greatly increases the compliance risks associated with exporting data from these terminals”, says Olivier Kenji Mathurin, Head of Strategic Research at AIM Software.

“With the multiplication of spreadsheets, the overall amount of data requested can increase considerably, breaching volume limits in place. The data vendor would then typically investigate the reason for the high volumes and quickly identify the non-compliant usage of the spreadsheets. A direct consequence can be the costly back-billing for such usage.”

Faced with this situation, one European financial firm was forced to demonstrate it had a plan to return to a compliant usage for dozens of different spreadsheets it ran across the organization for market conformity controls in trade compliance, risk allocation modeling, and in the back-office. After considering different alternatives, including internal development, the firm selected AIM Software.

The solution is a centralized system based on GAIN Data Portal that executes pre-defined requests to data vendors. It then stores fresh market data in a central repository and makes it easily accessible via spreadsheets for the authorized end users. Business end users are completely autonomous in accessing the data they need: the data can be directly accessed from the spreadsheets, the configuration can be done via a web browser.

As a result, the firm has a fully compliant solution enabling it to continue using spreadsheets fueled with up-to-date market data. In addition, the firm gained a central platform providing full control over data usage.

Josef Sommeregger, Managing Director and Chief Commercial Officer of AIM Software, adds: “The issue of data usage, compliance, and cost takes an increasingly important role. Our client community gathered in Vienna last June confirmed this has become a key priority. Lately, we have been overwhelmed by the positive response we received about this new product from both mid-tier and larger global buy-side firms.”

“GAIN Data Portal is the foundation for further data usage and cost control. The functionality introduced in this new packaged application is an answer to the market demand for more efficient control over data usage and data costs,” adds Sommeregger. “This release is a prime example of how AIM Software remains committed to providing its clients with innovative products required to generate the best possible results. We will continue to develop modern and state-of-the-art package applications addressing the data management challenges of our client community.”