The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has added new global custodian and prime broker automation capabilities to Omgeo Alert.
State Street is one of five custodians due to go live on the Omgeo Alert Global Custodian Direct service this year.
The release, Alert 5.0, includes the Global Custodian Direct feature, which enables global custodians and prime brokers to electronically maintain timely and accurate standard settlement instruction (SSI) data in the system, on behalf of their clients. Currently, investment managers perform these updates manually.
Global custodians and prime brokers, through adoption of Alert, can offer their clients the additional service of maintaining and providing SSI data in an automated, secure and efficient manner.
The service also facilitates the communication of custodian-sourced, market practice-compliant data by connecting a custodian's central SSI repository to the Alert host, using ISO 20022 messaging.
“Asset managers have traditionally maintained SSIs for their accounts, however, custodians have always been the source of this data, where each account settles and holds its assets. Omgeo created Alert to enable asset managers to maintain their SSIs in a central repository for brokers to access, driving value for these segments,” explained Bill Meenaghan, executive director of Alert product management at Omgeo.
“By adding custodians as users of Alert, we will be able to improve information quality standards, since custodians will automatically be updating their data as they create or change account standard settlement instructions.”
Dick Taggart, a member of the Omgeo board of managers and executive vice president at State Street, who also serves as chairman of DTCC’s SSI utility product governance committee, said: “By enabling global custodians to access and update Alert automatically via GC Direct, we add significant efficiency and risk reduction to the industry.”
“SSIs will be more complete and accurate, which helps reduce fail risk, and Omgeo’s establishment of a true utility under the DTCC umbrella reduces costs and risk for all subscribers and participants.”
Subsequent phases will expand asset class coverage in the service, as well as offer an enhanced application program interface for brokers, asset managers and third-party transaction services to retrieve SSI information in real-time during trade processing.
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