Quintillion Improves Data Integration with New Version of Paladyne Ref Data Suite

Ireland-based fund administration company Quintillion has gone live with a new version of the reference data management suite from software vendor Paladyne Systems.

Quintillion first implemented Paladyne in 2006, and has now upgraded to version 7 of the Price Master and Security Master, two components of the Paladyne data management offering. The new version, due to be officially released this week, is aimed at helping users manage larger data volumes.

Dublin-based Joan Kehoe, chief executive at Quintillion, says the company is committed to implementing the latest product releases, and the new version of Paladyne's data management suite has made a "huge difference to our operational model."

One of the main changes has been the integration between Price Master and Security Master, says Dublin-based Neil Mackay, head of investment operations at Quintillion. Price Master, which collects and stores pricing data and enables users to analyze prices and define rules, used to take data from Quintillion's accounting system, Advent Geneva, but with the new version, it can also link up to the Paladyne Security Master, a golden copy repository for security data and corporate actions.

This integration means that more data attributes can be included in the pricing process. "We can expose a lot more fields," says Mackay.

Quintillion takes data from vendors, and uses it to price instruments for net asset value calculations. "The more information you have in your database, the better the quality of the reporting," says Kehoe, adding: "That's a huge focus."

The upgrade is also set to help the company improve data administration. The new system enables Quintillion to choose a per security data license from data vendors, paying for the data it uses, as opposed to taking a bulk file of reference data, which can end up being more expensive. "This makes a lot of sense," says Kehoe.

In addition, the new dashboard for the Security Master has helped Quintillion improve efficiency. Version 7 includes an enhanced daily tasks manager, enabling users to monitor and process corporate actions and portfolio events from a centralized dashboard.

"We can look at events and see what events are coming up in the future," says Mackay, explaining that when there is a corporate action that results in the setting up of a new legal entity, the system can also feed that information downstream, improving automation.

Automation was also the goal when Quintillion first selected Paladyne four years ago. "Our objective was to avoid manual intervention and have everything as automated as possible," says Kehoe, adding that Paladyne has been a "super fit" for the company.

Meanwhile, as the new version of Paladyne's data management system can handle larger data volumes and offer improved flexibility, the release is also set to help the vendor target larger companies.

Paladyne has traditionally focused on hedge funds, and moved up the market to fund administration companies and asset managers. New York-based Sol Zlotchenko, chief technology officer at Paladyne, says: "We've now started to get more interest from the sell side as well."

The new version includes more developer tools, and modules that can help firms connect proprietary systems to the Price Master and Security Master. Zlotchenko says Paladyne has built a lot of out-of-the-box functionality to help firms connect vendor systems to the Paladyne platform, but the new version also includes more tools for customization, which can benefit larger organizations that have more proprietary systems that need to be integrated with the reference data offering.