Operations: Abbey Financial Markets Expands Use of Asset Control Platform Into Corporate Actions Data Management, and more.

Abbey Financial Markets (AFM) has extended use of its Asset Control (AC) platform beyond risk-related data management and into corporate-actions-data management, the vendor announced Monday.

AFM chose the Telekurs Financial Valordata Feed (VDF) as the vendor source for corporate actions data, as well as pricing and reference data. The feed was integrated into the AC platform using the AC Plus feed handler for the VDF.

In a statement from the news release, Bruce Angus, head of IT services management at AFM, said, "The decision to extend usage of the Asset Control platform into corporate actions data enables us to leverage our existing data infrastructure to provide new business functionality." Angus added that "The implementation of the Telekurs Financial VDF is the first phase of the AC corporation-actions-data-feed project, which is part of a broad expansion program to deliver as much benefit from Asset Control as possible."

The Telekurs Financial VDF is a leading source of pricing, reference and corporate actions data. The feed covers more than 2.2 million instruments and approximately 400,000 institutions worldwide.

Capco Forms Certification Program for Reference Data

Capco Reference Data Services (CRDS) has formed a new Managed Services Alliance Partner Certification Program to benefit the reference-data services it provides to leading financial institutions worldwide.

The purpose of the alliance-partner program is to ensure that clients of CRDS' data solutions, particularly its Global Index Monitor and Global Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) Monitor (GEM), receive CRDS' high-quality, clean and reliable index and ETF data in a seamless, more efficient and lower-cost manner, the vendor says.

The members of the new certification program are: Citadel Associates, DSTi, GoldenSource, SimCorp USA, and TAP Solutions.

Alliance partners are asked to ensure their solutions interface with the Global Index Monitor and GEM services in accordance with guidelines authored by CRDS, including recertification for file-format changes by CRDS and new or major release to vendor software.

The Global Index Monitor is a single source of cleansed global-index data designed for financial-services firms and is delivered via a secure FTP server. GEM is a comprehensive source of constituent data for the growing international ETF marketplace. GEM covers U.S.-traded ETFs and most liquid international-listed ETFs from London, Amsterdam and other exchanges.