IMD & IRD Awards 2023: Best enterprise data management initiative—Rimes

Overview

QSuper, an Australian superannuation fund that manages retirement savings for more than 600,000 Australians, selected Rimes’ Matrix IDM data management solution to underpin a long-term data strategy project to significantly improve its investment data quality.

The solution

Rimes’ Matrix IDM platform was selected by QSuper due to its integrated operational data store, data warehouse, and Power BI integration for exposure reporting. It provides QSuper with an integrated data management solution across security, pricing, positions, accounts, risk, performance, and corporate actions. The system’s “look-through” capabilities across QSuper’s complex fund structure and its alignment with Microsoft were crucial differentiators.

Secret sauce

The Matrix IDM platform is a solution designed for use by front-office professionals. It offers cloud-native data management and business intelligence capabilities to support a range of critical business functions. The platform utilizes an intuitive, proprietary, and flexible document data model to store data, enabling rapid solution development and alignment to client requirements, while its Rich Excel integrated API framework and query language allows easy interaction with all facets of data.

Through its Matrix IDM solution, Rimes is able to extend its existing Managed Data Services―the combined offering features a fully managed EDM service and a data management solution in one.

Recent milestones

The QSuper project started in early 2021, with fast time-to-value, and has provided:

• Improved data quality
• Auto-generated “look through”
• Rapid loading of data
• Improved security mastering
• Circuit-breaker functionality
• The ability to consolidate multiple static datasets (portfolios) in one location

Future objectives

• Creating a common view of many diverse sources of ESG data, enabling investors to understand the nuances and the level of confidence they should have in these different sources
• Broadening data distribution channels at a platform level, enabling the firm to rapidly respond to client needs
• Continuing investment in operational tooling and workflow optimization, making sustainable productivity gains in client and data servicing frontlines with new technology

Why they won

Rimes follows up its win in this category of the 2022 IMD & IRD Awards by winning it again, thanks to the roll-out of its impressive Matrix IDM platform. The initiatives for which the two wins were awarded―the implementation of Rimes’ Matrix IDM platform at Australian superannuation fund, QSuper―are the same, although that should not detract from the overall quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of the project. If anything, the back-to-back wins emphasise just how transformational the implementation was for QSuper and the extent to which it has allowed the firm to improve its all-round data quality, security mastering and fund look though.