Data Validation in The Age of Audits

Like it or not, we are living in the age of audits and regulatory examinations. From internal teams that scrutinize our processes to regulatory bodies like FINRA and the SEC that scour over client data. The financial services industry has endured these necessary headaches for years, and until recently, they would only impact our businesses a couple times a year. Unfortunately, those days are behind us. We are now in a period where continual audits are the norm, and financial services organizations need to be flexible and quick to react to ever-changing regulatory requirements.

When our client came to us and asked the same question, our answer to the problem was to create an independent, light-weight validation solution. Working with industry partner the DTCC, we created a system that autonomously validates the balance information entering Pandia, our books and records application. We’ve been working with the DTCC’s PVF and PFF files for 15 years and many processes are dependent on it. Creating an independent tool to audit our existing processes was the logical evolution of our system.

The data validation tool is designed to take advantage of the latest technology available. It is both flexible and extendable, able to process file types from any source and independently validate against any books and records system. APIs provide access into and out of the data validation tool, and encrypted communication keeps all of the data secure. We currently validate DTCC and Pershing Subscribe position information against aggregation import processes. With the extensibility of our system, we will continue to add additional feed sources and data formats to this list.