The Importance of Communication Standards

December 23, 2011 | Share We are pleased to announce that Vestmark has submitted a Model Messaging schema to the Money Management Institute's Model Management Subcommittee to help accelerate industry standardization of data exchange between model providers and model receivers to support Unified Managed Account (UMA) programs and models only Separately Managed Account (SMA) programs.

Our own CTO and also Co-Chair of the MMI Data Standards Committee, Heeren Pathak, worked closely with the committee on the standards. In our recent release, Heeren commented:

"The VestmarkONE platform has had a full proprietary Model messaging capability for years and we have adapted this technology to meet the Models Subcommittee's Model Messaging Business Requirements to help move the standards process forward. We have also committed to fully implementing the Model Messaging Standards in the VestmarkONE platform, into both our Model Portal solution used by Sponsors and Overlay Managers to receive models and our Model Distribution solution used by Managers to send models."

We made this submission, representing years of research and refinement, with an interest in increasing overall efficiency across a multi-party investment "supply chain" - something that is very common in advisory programs. Other technology providers have quietly but actively worked against open communication standards and some have even gone as far as claiming ownership of client information and holdings. Such a practice is both short-sighted by the technology provider and detrimental to the larger industry.

Vestmark is committed to a different approach. We seek to streamline communication between parties and make it a non-factor however we can. This goal of making communication a non-factor has led us to build a large network of connectivity between industry participants out of necessity. But our true focus is on the value-added areas in enabling institutional-caliber investment advice to be efficiently managed and delivered at retail volumes.

Hopefully communication standards will catch on in this industry. That will allow us (and our other technology platform competitors) to invest more in the value-added areas that will help allow this industry to better serve the end investor.