Semantics standardization for financial industry integration

The financial services industry presents some unique challenges in data integration, both within firms and across the securities trading process. This paper describes how the industry came to an awareness of the need to define semantics as an industry wide standard, and the methods and processes used to realize that requirement in the form of an industry Semantics Repository. The repository is described in terms of how it is modeled in semantic web standards using conventional CASE tooling via a standard metamodel and profile for semantic modeling. The model was presented to business domain experts and reviewed in order to achieve industry consensus on terms and definitions for securities. Finally, this paper looks at some of the ways in which the Semantics repository is used to address integration problems within banks and investment firms. A further “proof of Concept” project is described which deals with systemic risk management in the context of recent changes in the financial regulatory landscape.