SimCorp, a leading provider of investment management solutions and services to the global financial services industry, announces the launch of Datacare, a new managed data service for the global buy side. Developed in collaboration with Zurich Insurance Group (Zurich) and global buy-side institutions from the SimCorp Gain client community, Datacare* combines state-of-the-art technology and a managed service, providing a highly automated, multi-asset, front-to-back solution for market and reference data management. Powered by SimCorp Gain**, Datacare tackles a substantial gap in available solutions that holistically offer operational efficiency, data advisory and multi-asset class coverage in one data management solution. SimCorp’s managed service delivers ready to use, validated data for business operations, relieving the expensive, time-consuming and distracting data headache firms face today, as they struggle to compete in already tough market conditions.
Several buy-side institutions within the SimCorp Gain client community, including Zurich’s three-digit billion Investment Management arm, have played an active development role in the solution. Like many buy-side operations, the investment management unit of Zurich has faced a variety of pressures from handling more complex and specialized multi-asset data, across multiple countries and regulatory jurisdictions. This, together with proliferated sources of market data in the front office, has led to a significant shift, increasing the complexity of buy-side operations. Core to this complexity, is data management and maintenance, with firms grappling to attain a trusted audit trail and reliably act on their data. At the same time, a multitude of changing operational and regulatory data requirements are preoccupying data operations teams, making it difficult for firms to focus on more value-added tasks, such as advanced analytics.
These challenges have now led to growing industry recognition of data management as a critical business function. However, while existing solutions, such as Enterprise Data Management (EDM) systems and outsourcing, have tackled data quality and operational efficiency, they have fallen short on delivering vital support on two fronts, to meet evolving needs. Firstly, the delivery of best practice guidance and data advisory and secondly, enabling increased agility in rolling out new asset classes and data sets. Built with SimCorp’s strong, established expertise, Datacare fills this void by providing enhanced best practice guidance and change management support, so customers can capitalize on the true value of their data, without the operational burden.
This unique data advisory helps customers to get a true handle on the volumes of data they hold and stay on top of any industry, regulatory and market data changes that may impact their business operations. With full governance and transparency across a wide range of asset classes and instruments, firms not only benefit from improved operational agility and reduced costs, but are also empowered with an analytical tool for alpha generation. As external requirements change, so too does the solution, through upgraded releases, giving firms the flexibility to stay agile in the face of competition and use data to seize new investment opportunities in the front office.
Michael Kopf, Chief Operating Officer of the Investment Management function of Zurich, comments: “We believe that there is a great opportunity for digitalization in investment management and that an innovative solution can be achieved by cooperating with others on data. Having established a successful relationship with SimCorp, the collaboration to develop Datacare has effectively addressed the complexity of data management, with the flexibility needed today. By having a trusted service provisioning day-to-day, standardized, but critical externally sourced data, we can now focus our resources on advanced data driven opportunities for Zurich’s Investment Management. As SimCorp rolls Datacare out and builds a community of clients on the platform, we are confident that we will achieve the scale and outcomes desired, which we could not have achieved on our own.”
Josef Sommeregger Managing Director for SimCorp Gain comments: “We are extremely pleased to work with Zurich on this unique and pivotal solution. With Datacare, data is now firmly at the core of SimCorp, complementing its existing suite of solutions, to offer a complete outcome oriented service. By channeling into our clients operations and closely understanding and addressing the day to day data challenges they face, we believe Datacare can make a significant impact, eliminating the data headache that has persisted in buy-side investment operations for so long. Moreover, our continued client collaboration, together with SimCorp’s advisory team, ensures the solution continues to keep our clients ahead of the changing data landscape.”
