The Griffon Group, L.L.C.
Security Master Central Overview
Security Master Central is designed to sit at the center of the
security master maintenance process, providing users with a single point of entry and
maintenance for all security master information. Security Master Central greatly reduces
the redundant maintenance of multiple security masters, and provides users with an
extensive array of business rules to help ensure the quality of the security master data.
The application accepts automated data feeds from multiple security master sources and
interfaces with multiple client systems, supporting all security types including equity,
fixed income, money market, and derivatives.
Security Master Central Highlights
Security Set-Up and Maintenance
Security Master Central provides the user with an automated process to retrieve security
master set-up information from vendors or client systems. By inputting a security ID, for
example a CUSIP, the application will retrieve all requested fields from the designated
vendor for that particular identifier. Maintenance screens are provided for manual
security set-ups, which contain user-definable default set-up data. The application also
has the ability to receive periodic updates from vendors or client systems, and if
necessary, contains automated processes to update securities on an overnight basis.
Security Master Verification
Security Master Central provides the users with detailed error reporting,
highlighting securities that fail user-definable verification tests. This process is
facilitated through a ‘staging’ area designed to allow users to view and resolve
potentially problematic security set-ups and updates. Functionality also exists that
reports errors when processing interface files. Examples of these errors might include
incorrect file formats, incorrect file dates, duplicate records, and/or unrecognized
security identifiers.
Security Master Distribution
Security Master Central is able to distribute one or many securities to one
or many downstream client systems. Users are able to customize the fields that are
required by each of these client systems. If the required data is missing, the application
will create a warning message highlighting the exception.
Flexible File Formats
Flexible user-definable file formats allow users to define incoming and
outgoing file formats without the need for costly, extensive coding changes. With flexible
file formats, users have the ability to specify many different file variables including,
but not limited to headers, trailers, field widths, delimiting characters, blocking
indicators, hard coded formulas, and translations sets. Based on a predetermined number of
available fields, the user simply needs to frame the desired file format and save it,
making it immediately available for subsequent testing and use. This gives the users
tremendous flexibility, allowing them to edit existing or establish new file formats for
client systems and/or vendors in a matter of minutes.
Automated Interface
The application has an automated ‘job monitor’ process that
interfaces with both vendors and client systems. This interface allows users to create
request files for vendors, as well as recognize when a vendor file is available for
import. This functionality also allows users to transmit security master records to
downstream client systems on an intra-day and/or end-of-day basis. A central screen
enables users to monitor all of this activity between the application, vendors, and client
systems.
Reporting
The security master includes defined control reporting and the ability for
users to perform ad-hoc reporting using third-party reporting tools such as
Seagates’s Crystal Reports or Sybase’s InfoMaker. Examples of defined control
reporting include Upcoming Variable Rate Change Report, Management Summary Report, and
Information Changed Due to Overnight Vendor Updates Reports.
Maintenance Screens
The application provides maintenance screens for all support information
such as industries, issuers, currencies, countries, put/call/sink schedules, MBS factors
and many others. These screens allow users to add new records, change existing records, or
delete existing records. Many of these screens contain business rules ensuring the
integrity of the data maintained within the application.
Audit
Security Master Central has full audit capabilities. Users have the ability
to query changes to critical data by multiple criteria, including but not limited to Date,
User ID, Security ID, and Audit Type. The results of these queries can be displayed
on-line or in hard copy form.
User Password Levels
Security Master Central has a comprehensive set of user-definable password
levels. This provides managers with the ability to assign users or groups of users to a
predetermined list of function levels, ensuring that only authorized personnel have access
to critical data.
The Griffon Group Product Suite
Security Master Central can be easily integrated into Griffon’s
Pricing Central and/or Corporate Actions Central application(s). Each one of these three
applications can operate independently of one another, or they can be linked to share
pricing, corporate action, and/or security master information. For example, Security
Master Central can display the latest pricing information from Pricing Central, and/or
Pricing Central can utilize Security Master Central as its source for security master data
such as descriptions, security types, and pricing currencies.
Technology
Security Master Central is a client/server application. The GUI portion was
created using Powerbuilder. Windows 95/98 and NT GUI clients are supported. The server
portion of the application is a combination of a Sybase SQL Server database and several
server processes created using C/C++. The Sybase database can run on any of the Sybase
supported platforms. The C/C++ server processes currently run on HP-UX 10.20, with
additional UNIX operating systems targeted for future support.
For further information and/or a demonstration, please contact The Griffon Group.
