We responded to a number of calls following our post last week highlighting the challenges faced by the CICI Utility with regard to self-registration. One call came from a senior executive of the DTCC, who carefully explained that many of the data issues we highlighted were the result of business rules being applied to entity registrations.
For example, in cases where there are Inadequate Sources to verify the registration information, the information is added to the database “as is.”
INADEQUATE_SOURCES – If the record is not a duplicate of an existing record and does not conflict with publicly available sources, the information may not be able to be found via publicly available sources. In this case, “Inadequate Sources” is noted. Source: CICIUtility
Another issue we found was that a large number of entities are tagged with the Legal Form of “Other.” This is due to the significant number of Funds in the database, for which there is no legal form classification.
In an effort to improve data quality, the DTCC plans to establish a vendor workgroup that, working together, can enhance the business rules and data accuracy of the CICI and ultimately the LEI. We at Alacra look forward to joining the group.
In the interim, Alacra thoroughly checks each of the Certified CICI entities before admitting it to the Alacra Authority File. This is the process the Alacra Reference Data team follows to handle quality assurance and data corrections.
- Split records into groups with
- populated data and
- unpopulated data fields.
- For records with populated data fields
- Correct information in the wrong fields (city/state attributes switched).
- Review populated fields and correct any internal inconsistencies (postal not matching country).
- For records with missing data
- Populate missing data from inference off another field. (Infer city from postal).
- Correct spelling mistakes.
- Expand address abbreviations.
- Format address attributes in consistent format per country. Note: we do not verify the reported address.
- Remove notations from the name field.
- Expand name abbreviations.
We have made thousands of changes to date when we add Certified CICI entities to the Alacra Authority File. The result is an accurate, consistently populated database containing all Rated, Regulated, Listed and Certified CICI (and other pre-LEI) entities that can be used as a reference data backbone or can enhance the accuracy of an existing reference data repository.
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