Markit is starting the next phase of enhancements and developments, moving further towards the vision of the future evolution of MDE. Markit considers all of the developments outlined below to be of value to both the buy and sell-side, thus creating an even stronger proposition for the wider adoption of MDE. Online forms Online forms capture core entity/fund data, which can be used to simplify and speed up client account on-boarding. The data that can be captured is very broad with focus currently centred on data such as settlement instructions and various industry codes e.g. DTCC, MarkitWire and SIC codes. This will serve to benefit both the sell and buy-side community as with such data more readily available there will be greater operational efficiency, internally to firms and between counterparties. Electronic W-8 and W-9 tax forms Markit is in discussion with the IRS to allow MDE to be an approved platform on which to generate and disseminate electronic W8 and W9 tax forms. By moving online, firms can completely remove the need for physical tax forms since the electronic version can be shared across multiple withholding agents. This will eliminate a huge workload burden that currently exists for everyone in the industry, with many forms being produced and signed manually. User dashboards User dashboards will give value-added reporting that replicates the e-mail flow between buy-side and sell-side, streamlined for efficiency. All users will be able to customise their view and specific alerts according to preference (e.g. dates, client, event, document type). Reference data feeds A further expansion of online forms to develop an XML reference data toolkit which can be deployed to provide feeds directly into client systems, helping them to maintain their client data. This reference data will be underpinned by the client documents on MDE. Future architecture Markit sees MDE architecture evolving considerably, both relating to potential internal integration with other Markit products as well as external parties. |
