CCDM Proposes Utility in the Cloud

The Central Counterparty for Data Management (CCDM), a group set up by Financial Intergroup Holdings, has developed a utility concept where a searchable index of reference data would be hosted in a cloud environment and made accessible to regulators.

The creation of an industry reference data utility has been discussed for years now, with the focus being on setting up a new utility that firms feed basic information to. CCDM has instead suggested lifting out firms' existing databases, hosting an index of the data in a cloud environment, and providing a mechanism for regulators to access the data.

With the cloud model, regulators would have an interface, linking to the cloud and allowing them to query and search the data they want to look at, at the time they want to look at it.

It is also essential that the utility is global, meaning it will cover hundreds of databases. According to CCDM, this is now possible to do from a technical perspective.

New York-based Allan Grody, president, Financial Intergroup Advisers, says the technology that sits behind it already exists. "There's a handful of best-of-breed platforms," he says.

Most institutions now have reference data programs running, and this model would mean they could leverage the work that has been done in terms of centralizing data as part of enterprise data management programs. "We take all the brilliance that exists and connect the dots," he says.

The full version of this article will appear in the December issue of Inside Reference Data.