New Stream Symbology Service to Save Firms Time and Money
A multitude of identification “symbology” schemes are used to uniquely identify financial instruments. These are created by numbering agencies, data vendors, solution providers, or firms themselves. Different codes are often used at different stages of trade processing, which requires a series of mappings between the front-, middle- and back-offices to enable automation.
Symbology mapping is also needed by any firm requiring consolidated views across systems or data sources. While certain vendors provide cross-reference files or services, the proprietary nature of vendor codes and internal schemes leaves organizations with the challenge of comparing and reconciling codes. In addition, incomplete, inaccurate or delayed data can add exponentially to the challenge.
And finally, with the growth in the options industry and the Options Symbology Initiative (OSI) underway to change the way symbols are expressed, financial institutions will need a way to reconcile the old and new symbols, as well as reveal a growing number of underlying symbols. As activity in options trading continues – with OPRA sending out upwards of 750,000 messages per second on its data feed – the new format will allow for ticker symbols that better describe each option’s details. With the current symbols already existing in back-office or portfolio systems, firms will need to maintain links to the new OSI symbols, which presents yet another challenge.
SunGard is introducing a symbology mapping service that creates cross-reference files with mappings between client-requested symbols. Leveraging SunGard’s Stream data consolidation technology and its existing data management infrastructure for data loading, quality validation, standardization, matching and managed data services, this remapping and conversion service can be used with any back-office, order management and risk system to help firms eliminate manual in-houses processes and improve speed, quality and completeness of their symbology coverage.
Because most back-office, order management and risk systems require symbols in order to even begin their processes, speed and efficiency are of the essence. SunGard’s Stream Symbology Mapping Service will work in conjunction with the different third-party data and symbol suppliers, such as Thomson Reuters and Standard & Poor's, to help firms reduce errors, provide more efficient processing, and ensure that the normal flow of business remains uninterrupted. Staffed by professionals with symbology expertise, the service will help alleviate the excessive time and cost of maintaining the mapping of symbols in-house, as well as reliance on manual processes.
With consolidation of financial institutions in the industry, it is not unusual for firms to use a variety of overlapping back-end systems, with each of those systems using a different primary data supplier. Before a firm can embark on a centralized data management project, it needs to first compare and link data in each system in order for them to work together. The Stream Symbology Mapping Service provides the common symbology and up-to-date symbology tables needed to have all the back-end systems share a common link to data and can be the first step to a centralized data management infrastructure.
SunGard’s ability to aggregate data from many unique sources using proven platforms provides an important framework to help firms increase efficiencies and reduce costs. For more information on the Stream Symbology Mapping Service, please contact us.
