DTCC's Global Corporate Action Validation Service (GCA VS) provides a centralized source of "scrubbed" corporate action announcement information on securities globally.

For banks, broker/dealers and other financial institutions, the GCA Validation Service will change the way corporate action announcements are managed globally by eliminating redundant operations and technology and reducing the high fixed costs associated with this labor-intensive processing.

Overview

DTCC's Global Corporate Action Validation Service (GCA VS) helps improve operational efficiency and lowers risk, while providing greater processing accuracy and resiliency. The goal is to improve the quality of announcement information, so that all financial institutions can receive comprehensive data without duplicating effort.

The GCA Validation Service was launched in 2003 and is a service offering of DTCC Solutions LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of DTCC. 

Who Can Use This Service

Any organization in the world that needs access to corporate actions information on securities worldwide is eligible to sign up for the service, including broker/dealers, asset managers, hedge funds, custodian banks and others.

Benefits

The GCA Validation Service analyzes a broad array of corporate action information, through an intricate cleansing process of mapping, normalizing, consolidating and verifying information. Data is enriched with research performed by experienced professionals in multiple service centers around the world, eliminating the need for each financial institution to complete this work itself, simplifying the entire process from the initial announcement capture straight through to data validation.

Providing customers with comprehensive and high-quality descriptive information, the GCA Validation Service:

• Automates manual processing, reducing back-office operational costs and delivering economies of scale.
• Vastly improves the quality of data distributed, thereby dramatically reducing the potential for downstream processing errors or delays and the associated operational risks.
• Provides subscribers with greater operational flexibility to handle fluctuations in volume. Promotes the use of internationally accepted communications and messaging standards to more effectively manage sophisticated financial instruments and global transactions.

GCA VS applies a very broad definition to corporate actions, to include both mandatory and voluntary offerings in the Americas, Europe and Asia. As of 2006, GCA VS provided corporate actions announcement information on more than 1.5 million securities in more than 160 countries in 16 languages.

How the Service Works

The service validates data through an intricate process of mapping, normalizing and consolidating announcement information - generally referred to in the industry as scrubbing. Skilled professionals then enrich the data through follow-up research, relying on a wide array of sources.

Customers submit a "securities of interest" file and have the GCA Validation Service monitor and report on these specific securities throughout the day. Clear, comprehensive text about the corporate action, including information about restrictions that may apply, enable customers to pass the announcement record straight through to their investor clients or front office trading desk.

Customers receive a common composite record for each announcement. A file of these records is available several times a day, and includes event data for each composite record created or updated since the last publication.

Real-time, around-the-clock access to information through a secure,Web-based inquiry tool provides the most current version of the composite record.

A unique custodian verification feature compares and validates customers' corporate action announcement information from other sources (e.g., custodians, prime brokers) against the GCA Validation Service composite record, adding yet another level of data alignment.

For More Information

To find out more about how your organization can benefit, contact GCA VS Sales or email gcainfo@dtcc.com.

For support, contact the GCA VS Service Center or email gcainfo@dtcc.com.