Background
The first Bulk Valuation Standard was published in 2018 and was developed due to the emerging trend towards the use of regular data feeds from providers to service advisers’ client-facing systems. It contained the optimum amount of data required by an adviser to provide an up-to-date view of their clients’ value and investment positions, and was scalable to avoid any negative impact on providers’ core systems.
Why Standards?
By working with key market stakeholders, Criterion define Standards so that the data they contain, and how that data is structured and exchanged, meets the needs of the whole market. The result is that a single build can be deployed with many trading partners, cutting out wasteful redevelopment costs of linking between systems. This reduces market friction, and helps organisations to extend their reach, free up resource and concentrate on what differentiates them.
Standard Evolution
Following the adoption and implementation of Bulk Valuation Standards across the industry, several additional data requirements were identified by users though our governance process. Our approach to governance provides a framework that helps industry participants work together to streamline their business processes and is reactive to the evolution of standards once implemented. It ensures that Standards are sustainable, relevant and up to date.
Having recognised the industry’s appetite for the enhanced data content, we facilitated a review and discussion on the proposed changes and once agreed, provided early sight of the solution ahead of standard publication this month.
The new provisional version 1.1 contains all known enhancements identified by the industry and our intention is to finalise in February 2022.
The updated Criterion Bulk Valuations Standard gives us a way to create and update valuations for thousands of clients overnight across the moneyinfo service that is much more efficient and scalable than integrations designed for single contract use. The Standard allows us to build up histories of valuations over time, which are visible to the client and adviser through the portal. It removes the need for keying of data and saves advice firms significant time and money.
Tessa Lee, moneyinfo
