Advisory Partner at PwC Luxembourg; Credit: PwC Luxembourg

On Monday 25 April 2022, PwC Luxembourg announced the strengthening of its services offering to the financial industry with the addition of a data management platform called "Data Central" developed by April Software S.A.

For a majority of services such as regulatory and investor reporting and preparation of financial statements, an extensive data collection from different sources is required (external vendors, fund administrators, depositary etc.).

The key objective for acquiring Data Central is to centralise all the financial data in the same format in one place. This streamlines a time-consuming process and offers clients a central source of information. That is at the very heart of the Managed Services promise.

Cédric Nanni , Former April Software CEO, said: “By joining PwC, we see a great opportunity to further develop Data Central and even better address the growing demand of such data management platforms.”

Benjamin Gauthier, Partner, Managed Services, PwC Luxembourg, said: “Through our use of the services of April Software to implement and deploy Data Central, we clearly saw the material gain of efficiency in data collection but, more importantly, in the capacity to make our clients benefit from a standardised storage of all their funds data. In the context of the growth of our range of Managed Services linked to heavy data collection, we came to the conclusion that having Data Central was at the heart of our offering and thus decided that owning the Intellectual Property and involving the team in our day-to-day business was the best approach.”

Data Central’s main features:

  • The platform is cloud based, giving a lot of flexibility and adaptability to the different needs and requirements of clients;
  • Data Central is already connected to more than 25 data sources (Fund Administration, Brokers and Depositaries);
  • The onboarding of any new data sources is managed within a few working days, thanks to a very innovative technology and a dedicated team;
  • Data are controlled, standardised and enriched if necessary to feed other PwC Managed Services applications;
  • While the platform takes care of the conversion and centralisation of the data, the data remains permanently accessible via web-access or embedded Excel API.

François Génaux, Advisory Leader of PwC Luxembourg, said: “The strategy is one of continuous development, with a more centralised approach, which serves as a catalyst for the innovation of new and enhanced services and tools. Alongside investment in people as well as acquisitions and partnerships, we are delivering on our view of the future, one that is people-led, enhanced by powerful technology and digitally amplified.”