Press Releases

Asset Control Launches AC PriceMaster for Market Risk Data, Market Snapshots and EOD Valuations

New York, NY, August 9, 2004

Quick-start Solution Leverages a Decade of Proven Implementations and Intense R&D to Provide the Most Extensive Market Data Functionality Available

Asset Control, a leading provider of investment data management solutions to the financial industry, today announced the newest entry in its suite of off-the-shelf business solutions, AC PriceMaster for managing pricing data. A specialized configuration of the modular AC Plus, Asset Control’s flagship data management product, AC PriceMaster provides a quick-to-implement solution for managing the entire market data lifecycle including gathering and verifying, consolidating and cleansing, creating and maintaining risk factors and curves, and making data available to user and applications.

AC PriceMaster is the new quick-start version of the Asset Control market data management solution that is currently used by virtually every Asset Control customer. It has been chosen repeatedly over other “leading” commercial solutions in competitive evaluations. In many cases, it has been selected to replace these commercial solutions. Based on customer feedback and the continuing loyalty of Asset Control customers to the product, the firm believes that AC PriceMaster represents the most robust and complete data management solution available today to capital markets firms.

“More than a decade ago, Asset Control began its business by providing risk managers with a powerful toolkit for consolidating and cleansing price data from multiple sources. Though we’ve gone on to add new data categories, such as reference data, corporate actions and legal entity data, we still find that market risk management continues to be one of our strongest sources of new customers,” said Ger Rosenkamp, CEO. “Today our developer’s toolkit has evolved into an out-of-the-box solution that can be implemented in only days or weeks. It includes many features – feed handlers, GUIs, curve manager, workflow, research tools – all developed in collaboration with our customers, making AC PriceMaster a unique combination of cutting-edge technology and proven reliability.”

Features of AC PriceMaster include the following:

• Pre-built feed handlers for major real-time gateways such as Reuters, FT Interactive Data, Telekurs and Bloomberg. Normalization models to consolidate and cleanse quote data from different listings, vendors and contributors into “golden copy” or multiple golden copies.
• Super-reliable and scalable time-series repository tuned for high-speed loading, automated cleansing and workflow support, rapid calculation of end-of-day (EOD) valuations, and automated and ad hoc analytics based on current and historic prices.
• Generation and graphical visualization of risk factors and curves, such as zero curves, bond curves, implied volatilities and correlation matrices.
• Flexibility in aligning instruments, geography or applications to time-windows for data loading, schedules for publications and alerts, and multi-point research such as market snapshots and investment profiles.
• Audit trail of all data history for research and compliance.
• Advanced workflow functionality to route data-related tasks to individuals and departments with comprehensive oversight tools.
• Easy-to-learn user tools for data access and manipulation.
• Diverse tools for data distribution and application interfaces.

Like all Asset Control business solutions, AC PriceMaster is configured from the AC Plus modular framework. Adding new data types or additional functionality is a seamless process, and the scalability of the system in Unix or Linux versions supports enterprise-implementations as well as departmental use.  The new AC PriceMaster has been implemented at several financial institutions, which may be visited by prospective customers. To learn more about AC PriceMaster,
please contact info@asset-control.com.

About Asset Control
Asset Control provides the financial industry with software and outsourced solutions for improved efficiency and cost control of investment data management, as well as adding more business value to the data.  Quick-to-implement solutions, based on the robust and reliable AC Plus modular framework, range from technical solutions such as AC SmartFeed, and AC Business Suite solutions for risk and research, to infrastructure solutions for STP, global data networking and enterprise data control.

Data coverage includes reference (security master), corporate actions, issuer, counterparty and settlement, historic and real-time market data. Managing data from vendors and in-house systems, Asset Control’s broad functionality includes collection, validation, normalizing, and consolidation into a cleansed composite “golden copy” set aligned to industry standards such as ISO 15022.

Customers include the London Clearing House (LCH), Abbey National, ABN AMRO, Barclays Capital, Bayerische Landesbank , BBVA, Citadel Investment Group, Commerzbank, IBM (Dresdner Bank), Harvard Management Company, HSH Nordbank, HypoVereinsbank, ING, Robeco Groep, Santander Central Hispano, Société Générale, State Street 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