HVB Group is implementing a market data inventory management system from Dutch vendor Screen INFOmatch to monitor and manage market data vendor usage and contracts, and better track and allocate the money it spends on market data.

HVB Group, which includes HypoVereinsbank, the second largest German private financial institution, as well as Bank Austria, is a subsidiary of the Italian bank UniCredit. UniCredit first implemented INFOmatch in January of 2006 and is now expanding its usage to HVB Group to better track and manage market data usage firm-wide.

INFOmatch captures inventory information in a variety of formats, including Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Access database files, paper contracts and electronic files detailing usage declarations from Reuters and Bloomberg.

The plan to expand use of the INFOmatch market data management system to HVB Group was announced in December and was expected to be implemented in January.

INFOmatch can be fully hosted or deployed locally, and HVB and UniCredit have chosen to host the software themselves. The firm is currently setting up the information that HVB will contribute to the system's supporting database to be consolidated with user data from UniCredit. Screen has been collecting market data inventory information from HVB in Munich and entering it into UniCredit's INFOmatch system. 

"They will be part of the UniCredit database, so the systems will be hosted in Italy," says Peter Fruitema, managing director at Screen INFOmatch. "They'll deliver that data to us, and then we'll input it into the UniCredit systems," Fruitema says.

The data covered includes detailed contract information including start and end dates for each agreement, cost information and required notice periods for cancellations, and user information, such as who has access to which data sets. INFOmatch allows users to manage this data to produce market data inventory reports.

These reports can also incorporate usage data when integrated with market data usage reporting tools such as the Data Access and Reporting Tool (DART) from Wombat Financial Software subsidiary Harco, which can identify which data is being used by which traders. However, the bank has yet to resolve privacy issues before it can fully incorporate individual usage information.