The Search for Solvency II Solutions

"We provide a permission-controlled environment where asset managers decide who they deliver their data to," says John Dowdall, global business development at MoneyMate in Dublin. "It is not us deciding they should treat all investors equally. That is between themselves and their local regulators."

The timely transfer of data from asset managers to their insurance clients or TPAs also depends on all parties having a common understanding of the data items needed. This is an issue which the Investment Management Association's (IMA) TPA Solvency II working group is addressing by drawing up a template of the data that is needed.

"I see the IMA TPA working group template as the starting point for an industry standard for the data exchange process," says Alan Lawrence, State Street's Edinburgh-based Solvency II lead data consultant. "The worst thing that could possibly happen, from an insurance asset management perspective, is for every asset manager and every insurer to use its own template requirements. There would be absolute carnage if people exchange data using different formats, file specifications, protocols and time frames."

Vendor Data

The challenges do not end once the correct data has been collected from asset managers, as this information must be supplemented with a range of proprietary data items sourced from data vendors.

John Ellis, Edinburgh-based Solvency II program manager at State Street, says his team is dedicating 2013 to closing out a number of data gaps in its Solvency II product, the Solvency II Data Cube, but says some data items are still proving elusive.