Client Focus - Reference Data

Interactive Data provides a broad range of financial institutions with high-quality reference data to support their mission-critical operations.

Bank

Daily production of trade confirmations at large banks requires complete, timely and accurate terms and conditions data. Interactive Data provides global terms and conditions data, which includes essential identification and settlement information, for approximately 7 million securities.

In addition to delivering data to clients, Interactive Data focuses on helping its clients get a better understanding of their overall goals, requirements, data elements, measurement timeframes and data quality. Clients can use this information to help develop metrics to measure the quality, accuracy and timeliness of reference data, including terms and conditions data. With well-established metrics, an institution can better manage resources and assess risk, which can provide them with a competitive advantage.

This process also provides Interactive Data with valuable information that can be transformed into new client benefits, such as client-driven quality controls, service functionality enhancements and content expansion that directly address client requirements.

Money Management Firm

Corporate actions departments in large money management firms that rely exclusively on their custodians for corporate actions announcements can face a range of challenges. Missed events can be a daily occurrence, as either the information can be untimely (days after) or can be missed entirely, resulting in potentially significant operational risk.

Money management firms can subscribe to Interactive Data’s Corporate Actions Service and with the help of an automated corporate actions feed, build a corporate actions exception reporting system that not only gives them more timely data, but also serves as a tool to verify data. By utilizing Interactive Data’s Corporate Actions Service, investment management firms can improve processing efficiency and their ability to react to these time-sensitive events.

Online Brokerage Firm

Major online brokerage firms can receive client inquiries that are routed to regional help desk support teams. Inquiries may include requests for past and upcoming income payment events such as cash dividends. To address this, firms are looking for effective dates on payment rates, withholding tax and other details.

One way to address this issue is to provide their front-line support staff with direct access to Interactive Data’s corporate actions information. This can provide the client’s support personnel with direct access to an income payments database through a web-based subscription.

By utilizing Interactive Data’s corporate actions information, client support staff can research and answer client inquiries while the clients are on the phone, and provide a high-quality level of service. This can help contribute to reduced call times and the need to enlist the assistance of additional corporate action specialists.

Brokerage Firm

Brokerage firms often need to alert their registered representatives in advance when securities in their client’s portfolio are going to be affected by certain corporate actions, such as a specific bond issue that is to be retired due to redemption.

A brokerage firm can utilize the portfolio tracking capabilities in Interactive Data’s Corporate Actions Service to establish dedicated portfolios for each broker and enable them to track their positions. Interactive Data’s portfolio tracking capabilities generate daily email alerts that are emailed directly to the broker which allows them to track positions that will be cashed out due to bond redemptions.

By using these portfolio tracking capabilities, a brokerage firm can create broker specific portfolios and send critical called bond notices directly to the responsible broker. This can enable the broker to more quickly reinvest the funds on behalf of their clients.

Brokerage firms also need to confirm the adjusted cost basis for securities in client accounts that had been transferred to them from another broker. Firms estimated that it took about 20 minutes per account to manually derive the cost basis for a single security, with the estimate jumping to over an hour when reinvested dividends were factored in.

A brokerage firm’s customer accounts group can utilize Interactive Data’s Cost Basis service to automate key processes that can help minimize the time and expenses related to calculating cost basis in connection with these account transfers. In many instances, this service can generate a cost basis calculation in a matter of seconds.

Help Desks at Financial Institutions

Client advisory help desks that are responsible for aiding financial advisors in researching their clients’ adjusted shares and cost basis account information can be inundated with calls and e-mail, especially during tax season. The manual research time required for these inquiries can be significant, especially for complicated issues.

By utilizing Interactive Data’s cost basis calculator, brokerage firms can assist their registered representatives with these complex and time consuming issues. This service can help institutions provide a higher level of customer service and may reduce the need to hire additional support staff to research and calculate cost basis. The cost basis calculator has research functionality and data built in, and can generate a calculation in a matter of seconds.

Global Custodian

If a global custodian does not effectively track securities class action litigation, they could be missing the opportunity to claim additional funds. Without an automated service, an institution would likely need to dedicate additional full-time employees and a significant amount of IT expertise to identify and track class action litigation on behalf of its clients.

Interactive Data’s Class Actions service can provide data, tracking tools and the actual claim forms to institutions so that a firm can identify qualified holders, track the litigation, and file claims on behalf of its clients.