Tim Watmough, Head of EMEA Sales
David K Kelly, Managing Director
Introduction
An Immutable, Permissioned-Driven Central-Operating-Platform (COP) can completely transform the way in which an organisation interacts with its clients and administers its business. Quant Foundry can deliver such a platform, enabling its clients to access their services and data in a thoroughly secure and efficient operating environment. Additionally, such a platform can facilitate this at a fraction of the cost of a traditional mainframe and spreadsheet operating environment, via efficiencies and simplicity of operation based on the cor e principles of Immutability and Permissioned-Driven.
In this environment, the COP is the sole operating platform. All users interact with the Ledger as “Players” via functional Apps whether they are administrators within the company, analysts or external clients. The key factor is that all data is stored in a central location from which no Player can alter the data outside of the platform or tamper with (“Immutablee”).
Access to functionality and their data is governed by a central Permissioning function that defines exactly what applications a Player can access and what slice of data they can access and whether they can initiate changes in the status of the data (“Write”). Accordingly, the COP is an immutable, ring-fenced environment that can guarantee the provenance of what has changed and when, who has the permission to make that change and that it is validated.
Advantages
A COP environment has the following distinct advantages
- Elimination of fragmented architecture inherent to spreadsheet-based environments, which is very significant in the context of anecdotal evidence that over 85% of effort centres on data acquisition and normalisation
- Removal of vertical user silos and the difficulties in communication between systems that involves the movement of data.
- Massive uplift in efficiency, security and agility as data is never lost or corrupted and can be accessed without difficulty by the authorised users.
- Management of data via the ledger and the development of functional codes that interact with the ledger creates a development architecture that is highly responsive to new products and regulatory demands. The whole architecture is future-proof.
- Reduction in cost of ownership as the ledger provides perfect
auditability and BCBS 239 regulatory compliance.
- Expert programme management and implementation managed by Quant Foundry at a compelling price point.
Ownership and accountability
Ownership and accountability for any action are encoded onto the ledger – It is not possible to remove data from the platform, tamper via cyber attack or alter data without permission. Any mobilisation of data from within the platform is dealt with as a transaction and is therefore recorded on the ledger at the point in time. In short, the ledger records everything.
For example, all codes and classifications used by a bank are assigned to the COP. If an internal, authorised individual (Administrator), at the bank changes an attribution code classifying a specific counterparty client, there will immediately be an impact on the bank’s capital reserves. The permissioning governance structure ensures that the transaction is executed by an authorised person, validated independently before being committed to the ledger. The ensuing report highlights the activity and ensures that it is recorded and stays on the ledger.
Why Quant Foundry?
Inevitably, the most difficult aspect of sequencing a transition to a COP is the removal of the old spreadsheet based operating paradigm.
The Quant Foundry solution not only draws on leading practitioner expertise, they can deliver the entire transformation at a compelling price point.
The Managing Directors and Directors at Quant Foundry are Industry practitioners whose experience is drawn from leading Global Investment Banks across Risk Architecture, Analytics and Implementation. They have managed major changes in the relevant architecture in these complex and political environments.
Quant Foundry’s IT Partner, Stream Financial, is owned and managed by the industry luminary, Stephen Taylor, and provides the necessary accelerator to deploy the technology by using high performance and scalable data virtualisation and workflow.
Snapshot of the Delivery Programme
- GAP Analysis and advisory work on sequencing the programme of transition.
- Development of the functional scope – Rapid deployment of the ledger including API designs.
- Set up of the Governance procedure around the critical process of permissioning.
- Step by step migration until there is enough on the new platform for it to be the obvious and overwhelming go-to source for all information in the organisation.
- Arrival at the tipping point – Execute the final and complete transfer so that the COP is the one source of information and the sole operating platform.