The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, together with six banks, is launching a platform to centrally store legal entity data and client documentation for the financial industry in order to meet new regulations.

The DTCC said in a statement that it had established Clarient Entity Hub, which has been designed and developed with six founder banks – BNY Mellon, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and State Street — plus more than ten large asset managers and hedge funds.

Matthew Stauffer, chief executive of Clarient Global, told Markets Media that the utility was being tested with the six founder banks before it launches to the whole market later this year.

“It is very important that Clarient is owned and governed by the industry due to the sensitivity of the data and the imperative for control by the provider,” Stauffer added.

The DTCC developed the platform over the last year after assessing all the technology available in the marketplace. “This utility had a unique set of requirements and required leading edge technology for the user interface and relationship management,” said Stauffer.

Clarient Entity Hub will centrally store client data and documentation to allow the industry to meet regulations such as Know Your Customer, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, Dodd-Frank and the European Market Infrastructure Regulation.

“One of the reasons for setting up Clarient has been the increase in regulatory requirements for client data and documentation,” added Stauffer. “Clarient can keep pace with these changes by collecting data once and making it available for use many times at the permission of the buy-side firm.”

Firms can upload data and documentation into the new utility and Clarient staff will ensure that the data is accurate and provides a comprehensive view of the legal entity. Clarient users can also set permissions to manage their own relationship with the underlying entity.

Stauffer said: “Banks and broker-dealers will make significant operational savings and reduce risk through the ability to request and receive accurate information on a timely basis.”

Clarient Entity Hub will link to other DTCC’s established set of client reference data services including Avox, which has validated data for more than 1.5 million legal entities, and Omgeo ALERT, the global standing settlement instruction utility.

“One of the differentiators for DTCC is our ability to bring together our other reference data services such as Avox and Omgeo ALERT ensuring there are interfaces across the data,” added Stauffer.

Featured image via yblaz/Dollar Stock Photo