BayernLB Targets Data Budget with FinOffice

"We want to set up profiles for different roles, so that when someone moves from one to another we won't forget to cancel any real-time exchange accesses they don't need," says Werner Burger, head of trading systems at BayernLB.

The scope of the project currently covers around 500 data users at the bank's Munich base, and more than 40 data suppliers, including mainstream terminal vendors, providers of analytics, research and ratings, as well as exchanges. Burger says no plans exist to expand the system to cover staff at BayernLB's other key trading operations in London, New York and Hong Kong, since each office maintains autonomy over market data purchasing and the bank has no plans to centralize this function.

BayernLB is also looking to use the reporting functions within FinOffice to identify and suggest savings opportunities to traders who might not realize the data charges they are accruing. "The new system allows us to analyze where we get the data from, how we use it, and who is using it-so we can show everyone what data they have, how much it costs and what the alternatives are," Burger says.

The first phase of the project-which began at the end of 2008 and was completed in the second quarter of 2009-involved populating FinOffice with the bank's market data inventory information, which was previously stored in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. To integrate inventory data into FinOffice, BayernLB uses an interface from BST to upload information directly from Thomson Reuters' Direct Access Control System (DACS) user entitlement application, and Bloomberg Subscription Identification Data (SID) files, though the bank still populates market data inventory data for other vendors manually.

In future phases, BayernLB plans to add an interface to automatically upload invoice data for reconciling real-time exchange accesses and display products for which the bank has been billed, against entitlements from its Bloomberg SID files and DACS. "Until now, we have been inputting invoice data manually, but we are working on that," Burger says.

BayernLB is using FinOffice on an ASP (application service provider) delivery model, which means that the central database and application software is hosted at BST's headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, making the technology easier to support and maintain, says Philipp Meier, European managing director at BST. "It definitely allows us to offer enhanced service quality. The client has direct access to the database, but our support staff can still shadow a user, so if they have a navigation problem, we can log in and see exactly what they are doing," he adds.