Allianz Global Investors, a leading active asset manager with €633 billion in assets under management (AUM), partnered with IHS Markit to support its integrated, global operating model. This includes using our Enterprise Data Management (EDM) platform to manage its security and investment book of record (IBOR) data globally, as well as its product and investment strategy data.

In this interview, Bruno Derrien (Head of Data Solutions, AllianzGI) discusses the roll-out of the global investment data platform (GIDP) project at AllianzGI and explains why EDM's performance is critical to its success.

1) What are the origins and objectives of the IBOR and security data project?

We have an integrated, global operating model at AllianzGI. Our strategy is to use a suite of global tools rather than relying on a patchwork of local systems in different regions.

Previously, we used a variety of regional data warehouses to maintain our security and IBOR data. However, when we decided to change our middle- and back-office outsourcing provider, we saw an opportunity to create a global hub for our IBOR and security data using EDM.

EDM now centralizes, matches and masters security and IBOR data from multiple systems, and produces a gold copy that is used in downstream systems around the world. Our IBOR data hub spans almost all of our portfolios in all regions. It has created significant benefits in terms of efficiency and total cost of ownership, as well as the accessibility, consistency and quality of data.

2) How does your global approach to security and IBOR data work in practice? What challenges does it present?

We have this concept of 'one AllianzGI day', which starts early in the morning in APAC and ends at close of play on the US west coast. This means there are only one and a half days during the weekend when there is limited activity.

Our team is structured to support this timetable. We have both IT and data management profiles located in each region, who are available to address questions that come up during the course of the day.

As you can imagine, there are many systems across the globe that require this data, so we depend heavily on the reliability and smooth running of the EDM platform. We cannot just say, "Oh sorry, you can't use your tool because the previous system is blocked."

3. What sort of data volumes are involved today? How does EDM address your performance requirements?

This is a very data-intensive process involving around 11m core security records and 288k mastered security records. EDM receives, loads, masters and exports a huge volume of data throughout the day, with monthly data volumes of 350GB.

EDM's Core Matcher is critical for meeting our requirements. It must match and master in almost real time as the data is exported throughout the day to various downstream systems and any mismatch in data between various entities (positions, securities, transactions etc.) would cause issues for the downstream systems. We upgraded our EDM implementation to get some new features of the Core Matcher. This has really helped us meet the performance demands of our internal stakeholders. We upgrade the platform on an annual basis.

To learn how AllianzGI is using EDM to manage its product and investment strategy data, download the case study here.

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This article was published by S&P Global Market Intelligence and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.