Press Releases

Standard Bank of South Africa Selects Asset Control PriceMaster as Turnkey Data Solution for Global Market Risk

London, April 25, 2005

Asset Control, a leading provider of centralized data management solutions to the financial industry, today announced that Standard Bank of South Africa has selected Asset Control’s AC PriceMaster as its solution for global management of risk data. The initial turnkey implementation will be in Johannesburg with future plans for an implementation in London.

“Asset Control came highly recommended by existing users, and we have been pleased with their commitment and enthusiasm to ensure that we get the best and most appropriate solution for the group,” said Carolyn Cameron-Kirksmith, business manager of Global Markets SA of Standard Bank. “The flexibility of the new platform will allow us to gather, monitor and analyze market data across a broad number of asset classes, markets and countries globally.”

AC PriceMaster will be delivered turnkey, configured to the business requirements as defined by Standard Bank, including integration with feeds from external data sources, such as Reuters and Markit, as well as numerous internal systems within the bank.  In supporting the bank’s market risk management, it will provide market snapshots, data profiling and the generation of sophisticated risk factors.

“Standard Bank is a prestigious addition to the Asset Control customer group, and extends our business reach into the sub-Saharan banking sector of Africa, our fifth continent. This project also represents another step forward in our introduction of turnkey deliveries, which offer unprecedented speed while reducing complexity and risk in implementations,” said Ger Rosenkamp, CEO of Asset Control. “We are delighted to welcome Standard Bank as our newest customer.”

A special-purpose configuration of the AC Plus modular framework, AC PriceMaster manages current and historical price data for risk management, portfolio management and trading support. Like all AC Plus solutions, AC PriceMaster is extensible to additional data categories, including instrument reference data, counterparty and credit data, and corporate actions.

About Standard Bank
Standard Bank is a South African-based global financial services company founded in 1862. It is the largest South African banking group ranked by market capitalisation and earnings. At 31 December 2004, the group had assets of R506 billion.  In addition to retail and business banking, Standard Bank’s Corporate and Investment Banking division supports a wide range of clients around the world in banking, finance, trading, investment and advisory services. Standard Bank has offices in 17 African countries and 21 countries on other continents. It currently runs financial market trading operations in Johannesburg, London, New York, Hong Kong, Brazil, Istanbul and Moscow Standard Bank was recognized as Africa Bank of the Year and Emerging Markets Bank of the Year by The Banker magazine in 2004.

About Asset Control
Asset Control offers centralized data management to financial industry firms through a full range of in-house and outsourced options.  A choice of developer tools, turnkey software solutions and outsourced services enable users to optimize their investment data for efficiency, cost control, reduced operational risk and increased value from their data. 

Derived from the robust and reliable AC Plus modular framework, the Asset Control product set includes data solutions addressing market risk, counterparty credit risk, security master, research and corporate actions, as well as global data networking and administration. Handling data from vendors and in-house systems, these solutions collect, validate, normalize, and consolidate data into cleansed composite “golden copy” sets for business use.

Customers include the LCH.Clearnet, Abbey National, ABN AMRO, Barclays Capital, Bayerische Landesbank , BBVA, Commerzbank, IBM (Dresdner Bank), Harvard Management Company, HSH Nordbank, HypoVereinsbank, Grupo Santander, ING, Robeco Groep, Société Générale, Standard Bank, Standard Chartered and Union Investment, as well as a super-major global energy group. Established in 1991, Asset Control is a privately held firm with operations in London, New York and the Netherlands.  For more information please visit www.asset-control.com.