Standing Together: An Instruction to the Investment Industry

The debate over the right approach to SSIs has been raging for decades — much to the chagrin of investment managers worldwide. As with many of the data management challenges in the investment business, the problem is not one of overwhelming complexity or difficulty. However, as simple as the process ought to be of defining, capturing, communicating, and maintaining standing settlement instruction (SSI) data among the various parties to a trade, the reality remains a cumbersome and expensive distraction.

This TABB Group report examines the buy-side’s current attitude and approach to SSI management and any financial fallout that results from their strategy. It further investigates the investment industry’s interest in retaining operational management of their SSI data, and gauges their appetite for a variety of SSI scenarios, including a centralized utility model, a third-party or custodian-managed model, or one that maintains the data in the firm’s own systems.