The additions come in the form of two workstations named the Managed Feeds Workstation and the Benchmark Analytics Workstation - to support operations professionals, as well as benchmark users in the front- and middle-office.

RIMES MDS is a fully managed data service delivered by experts in all aspects of data management and governance, allowing for investment managers to focus more on managing their investment strategies rather than spending time and resources on managing the data itself. With the addition of the two workstations, RIMES’ focus is to ensure adaptability to the changing needs of the buy-side industry, namely:

• Increased demands for improved data governance: The increased focus from the board level in the industry highlights that effective data management is essential to achieving high-level corporate and strategic objectives. According to a recent Forrester study commissioned by RIMES on the state of data management of 100 buy-side firms, 80% of buy-side data users and data operations professionals said their key priority was to leverage data management to improve business planning.
• Increased regulatory oversight of the asset management industry: There are increased demands for more transparency from regulators on what data asset managers are using, where it comes from, and how it is treated and manipulated. For example, the EU Council has adopted new Benchmark Regulation to be enforced in 2017, which will set EU standard to combat the manipulation of financial benchmarks.

RIMES Managed Feeds Workstation

With the RIMES Managed Feeds Workstation, operations professionals and data users are able to analyze and manage summarized and detailed feed and benchmark inventory data, as well as service-related information, to support a firm’s data governance processes.

Key benefits of the workstation include:
• Efficient means to track all RIMES sourced benchmark data feeds, freeing up resources and systems
• Data governance facilitation with instant access to provenance and lineage reports covering data from source to the point of use
• A simple means to demonstrate to benchmark data providers and regulators what data is being received and how it is being used.

RIMES Benchmark Analytics Workstation

The RIMES Benchmark Analytics Workstation aims to support the front- and middle-office (e.g. performance, risk and compliance), by providing insight into any changes within a specific benchmark. The tool highlights key attributes of a benchmark such as joiners and leavers of a specific index, showcasing the potential impact of any changes to the index.

This will allow front and middle office staff to provide the best value to their clients by enhancing their investment analysis and processes by providing greater visibility into the data.

Steve Cheng, Global Head of Data Management Solutions, RIMES says, “There is no dispute that managing data causes major operational headaches and if not managed properly can result in inaccurate information for the investment manager, and ultimately business losses. At RIMES, we are focused on enhancing our technology to provide the tools that mitigate these risks for our clients in a way that is intuitive, provides increased transparency and is easy to use.”

RIMES MDS services over 300 clients across the globe, including 60% of the top asset managers and 9 out of the top 10 asset servicers. The RIMES workstations will be available to RIMES users and demos of the system are available.