London – Markit, a leading, global financial information services company, today announced that Friends Life Investments, the newly created asset management arm of the Friends Life Group, has gone live on the Markit Enterprise Data Management (EDM) platform (formerly Cadis Software).

Markit provides Friends Life Investments with a centralised hub to distribute data throughout the organisation providing data capture, cleansing, validation and exceptions management.
 
Mark Versey, Chief Investment Officer of Friends Life Investments, said: “We created an asset management business from scratch with aggressive timelines – the Friends Life Investments platform had to be live by the end of the second quarter of 2012 to manage the Friends Life Group’s fixed income assets.

“We chose Markit EDM based on their extensive experience with our market data, technology and outsourcing providers and their rapid implementation time.  We were also impressed by a solution that is very user focused and which we could quickly take ownership of ourselves.”

Daniel Simpson, Managing Director, Markit EDM, said:  “We are seeing a continued trend of asset management firms recognising the need to manage data in an efficient, transparent manner, enabling them to control operational costs and focus on core portfolio management activities.  We have provided Friends Life Investments with a short implementation time and reduced project risk so they can successfully carry on building out their business.”