Operations Newsflashes: China Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation Selects Teradata for Data Warehousing, and more

ING Announces Downsizing and Outsourcing

ING has announced that it will be downsizing the operations and IT activities of its banking departments in an effort to increase company-wide efficiency.

The company is reporting that 500 employees will be released from within the operations and IT banking division. These lay-offs are in addition to the 450 lay-offs announced in July. Further, ING plans to outsource 2,200 positions. The company will also downsize external staff, ending contracts for 1,400 employees, 550 of which have already been terminated.

ING expects cost savings to increase gradually in coming years, ultimately resulting in annual savings of EUR 190 million by 2008. "ING aims to excel in its services to the customer. To achieve that, we have to excel in execution and be cost efficient. Both sourcing and streamlining fit in ING's strategy of continually looking for ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency to preserve its competitive position, particularly in the mature Benelux market," says Eli Leenaars, executive board member of ING Group, in a release.

CSDCC Warehouses With Teradata

China Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation (CSDCC) has completed the second phase of its data warehousing system from Teradata, integrating data from the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets.

The data warehouse gives CSDCC a single view of all data relevant to China's securities market. This enables it to monitor transactions more effectively, ensure regulatory compliance and maintain tight data security. Phase one of the project was completed last year with the establishment of a data statistics platform. The recently completed second phase integrated all data from the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets resulting in improved data quality and shortened query times.

"Over the past two years, there has been a rapid increase in the volume of SDCC's data and, as a result, the CSDCC decided to expand the data warehouse system for a higher capacity and higher processing speed. In order to balance CSDC's immediate need with its long-term growth, we helped CSDCC to define objectives and deploy the warehouse phase by phase," says Randy Wang, general manager of Teradata in China, in a release.

The CSDCC system also supports online voting, browsing of the meeting agenda, meeting registration, vote printing, calculation and queries. These features eliminate the need for shareholders to be physically present at shareholders' meetings, enabling participation with minimal cost. In the next phase, CSDCC plans to deploy a data-mining functionality to its data warehouse.

Bailard goes With INDATA I.M.S.

Bailard, a San Francisco, Calif.-based investment firm, has deployed the INDATA I.M.S. system for portfolio modeling, pre- and post-trade compliance, trade order management, portfolio accounting and billing. "It was important for us to have a solution that enhanced our trading and compliance capabilities as well as a system that was capable of handling our specific accounting, reporting and billing requirements," explained Burnie Sparks, president of Bailard, in a release. "It was also important for us to have a company who could work with us throughout the conversion process to accommodate the unique functionality and reports that we had used for many years in our previous system." INDATA is a Greenwich, Conn.-based software solution provider for buy-side firms. Its products include trade order management, compliance, portfolio accounting and front-to-back office applications. I.M.S. is INDATA's flagship product suite that uses an industry standard relational database platform (Microsoft SQL Server 2000), which results in a real-time, modular and open architecture solutions. Bailard is an investment firm offering solutions for the unique needs of institutional and individual clients. The company currently manages $1.7 billion in assets.

UMB chooses Xcitek Class Actions

UMB Bank has selected the Xcitek Class Actions (XCA) service to address its needs in identifying, tracking and responding to securities class actions.

"We evaluated Xcitek's Class Actions product and felt it could help us improve current processes," says Laurie Box, vice president of trust and custody support services at UMB, in a release. "At UMB, our clients' interests are always foremost, and yet the area of servicing securities class actions on their behalf was a challenge. We thought an investment in XCA was in our clients' best interest."

XCA is a Web-based solution that helps financial institutions identify, track and collect funds emanating from securities class actions. It draws upon Xcitek's database of securities class actions to allow users to match current or past positions to ongoing litigation. The software includes features that enable users to stay updated including customized watch lists, e-mail alerts and portfolio monitoring.

New York-based Xcitek is a provider of market data, corporate actions software and staffing solutions to the financial services community.

UMB Financial is a Kansas City, Mo.-based multi-bank holding company. It offers banking and financial services to both individual and business customers.