The derivatives operation has tended to be isolated from such efforts, in part because it was relatively small and insular. The dynamics of lower volumes but high value meant data issues were typically not considered, with a belief that the trading and risk applications, such as Murex or Calypso, could handle this. This was true to an extent, believes Raeves, but there is seldom one application and the derivatives space is fragmented in terms of systems and market infrastructure. While there has been a big drive to tackle the confirmations backlog with infrastructure-type initiatives, 'this has happened in a non-integrated way', he feels. 'There are still quite a lot of manual hands-offs'. Institutions have also increased their number of data sources - or will do so going forwards - to improve valuations. As a result, the operation has become more complex, many professionals will know that they have an operational mess to sort out, and there is also internal pressure to address this with, almost certainly, requirements to follow.

The supplier's new solution is based on its existing data management platform. It has created templates and models for the most widely used exchange-traded and OTC contracts, says Raeves, with mapping for inbound data and for outbound data, the latter for publishing to trading and risk applications. It can be applied to products and portfolios, he says, with auditable transparency across instrument, issuer and counterparty exposure.

In this it has 'productised' work that it has done in the derivatives space at a number of institutions. It has worked here with Daiwa Securities SMBC, one of its flagship customers (IBS, February 2007), as well as with fund administrator, OpHedge, for a relatively broad derivatives requirement, and in the area of futures and options with UBS and HSBC.

GoldenSource is talking to a couple of existing users about the new commercial offering. Raeves believes there may still need to be some education. Often, where there are problems in areas such as reconciliations, valuations, and pricing, this is not recognised as a data problem, so there is a tendency to look instead for a point-solution. 'Everything gets easier if you take the data away from the application - that is our mantra.'

In terms of the project at Standard Chartered, this is a new customer for GoldenSource and it beat an incumbent, Access Control, says Raeves. The initial focus is on Asia Pacific and has seen the bank combining in-house sourced corporate action announcements and those from data vendors in various formats, including Swift ISO 15022, to create a cleansed and validated 'golden copy'. The deal was closed at the end of 2008 and the first phase went live in early March. A second phase will be to publish the golden copy to the banks core processing systems.