AIM Software, which provides data management solutions to financial firms, is to upgrade Swiss Bank Sarasin's existing Gain data management platform for an enhanced automation of instrument data processing for Avaloq via the Gain Avaloq adapter.

Bank Sarasin has been using Gain DataDesktop since 2002 for the the export of data to other systems and the production of data change reports. Due to larger market volumes and internationalisation, it became necessary for Bank Sarasin to use the platform to facilitate the delivery of data to its subsidiaries. Now the bank wants to expand on this usage.

"Owing to the positive experience with Gain data management in the past and the strong and proven track record in the Avaloq community, we have chosen to upgrade the existing solution. Also, Gain's interface is the only one certified by Avaloq, and Gain is a scalable platform that can grow along with our future needs," said Julius Zürcher, head of operations at Bank Sarasin.

"We will be able to further automate the opening of instruments directly in Avaloq and take another step towards full straight through processing," he said.

Whenever a bank adds a new instrument to its portfolio, it must first be opened in the core banking application. The request for the opening may either come from the trading room, the internet banking platform or any other department that needs the information. The automatic opening feature of Gain delivers all necessary fields without manual interference. This results in significant time and cost savings for Bank Sarasin and eliminates the risk of flawed inputs, according to AIM. 

In the first phase of the project, AIM Software installed the certified Avaloq adapter for Avaloq 2.6 which went live last November.

Further planned steps include the automation of corporate actions and the improvement of the price delivery process, as well as the deployment of the full range security master file at Bank Sarasin. By using Gain as central data management platform, Bank Sarasin will be able to centrally manage the data quality and the delivery of data feed information to its international subsidiaries.