“Seamless” MiFID II Transaction Reporting migration for Kepler Cheuvreux

 

Kepler Cheuvreux, a leading independent European financial services company that specialises in Research, Execution, Fixed Income and Credit, Structured Solutions, Corporate Finance and Asset Management with 600 employees and offices in 13 financial centres in Europe and the US, selected AQMetrics for its MiFID II transaction reporting in late 2020.

 

Kepler Cheuvreux had a need to replace its incumbent solution, and undertook an extensive search to find a platform authorised as an Approved Reporting Mechanism (ARM) that could meet its needs – and offer the simplest migration path possible.

 

The Solution

 

A platform that offered a seamless migration and best-in-market data management.

 

After an extensive search that involved deep due diligence on a number of platforms, Kepler Cheuvreux chose AQMetrics for its easy migration, dual EU and UK authorisation, robust technology and expert team knowledge.’Migrating is typically not an easy task,’ explained Frederic Jamin, Group Performance Manager at Kepler Cheuvreux. ‘But with AQMetrics it was seamless. There are several vendors out there, and we carefully selected our new partner for their expertise and knowledge with regards to MiFID II migration projects.’ The automation and transformation capabilities of the AQMetrics platform also allowed Kepler Cheuvreux to future-proof their solution for future regulatory change.

The joint Kepler Cheuvreux and AQMetrics teams held detailed data migration workshops, where the existing native files were mapped to the standard AQMetrics format. AQMetrics data enrichment rules were also used to supplement the data management process. Throughout the process, the protection and management of natural person data was of critical importance to Kepler Cheuvreux, with abstraction used to minimise the natural person data in transit. Real time reporting feedback loops were deployed, to ensure any critical errors were reported in a timely manner. The migration project included a shadow parallel run, whereby AQMetrics provided access to a live staging system for end-to-end testing. This allowed Kepler Cheuvreux to perform parallel benchmarking against their live reporting system and ensured they had complete confidence to switch over to the AQMetrics ARM platform within the required deadlines.’ We were impressed by their ability to integrate data in a short period of time,’ Frederic Jamin added.’ The entire process was pain free and we have been impressed by AQMetrics’ MiFID II platform so far.’