Please refer to the invitation for Expression of Interest (EOI) for Identification of Solution Providers for implementing Integrated Market Surveillance System (IMSS) at RBI, released on the RBI website on July 5, 2019 and the pre-bid meeting in this regard held on July 22, 2019.
2. Responses to queries raised by prospective respondents are given below. Respondents are advised to take the following clarifications/responses into account.
| Sr. No | Section No. | Page No. | Point No. | Description as given in EOI | Query | Response |
| 1 | 7. Eligibility Criteria | 12 | NA | The prime bidder should be a Company registered under the Companies Act of India or LLP / firm registered under the respective Acts of India. | How critical is it for the prime bidder to be a company that is registered in India? | As per EOI. |
| 2 | 7. Eligibility Criteria | 12 | NA | The prime bidder should have annual turnover of at least INR 300 million and a positive net worth in each of the last three (3) financial years. | How Critical is for the prime bidder to meet these financial requirements, in case of acquisition? | As per EOI. |
| 3 | 7. Eligibility Criteria | 12 | NA | The prime bidder should be a
Company registered under the
Companies Act of India or LLP / firm registered under the respective Acts
of India. | In case of a divesture, whether the new firm is exempted from requirement of point 2 of the eligibility criteria? | As per EOI. |
| 4 | 7. Eligibility Criteria | 12 | NA | Proof of SI and OEM partnership | The prime bidder is a Company registered under the Companies Act of India.
Is it, therefore, also mandatory for prime bidder’s partner (SI/OEM) to be registered under the Companies Act of India? Or can a Company not registered under the Companies Act of India be a partner SI/OEM to the prime bidder? | It is mandatory for the prime bidder to be a Company registered under the Companies Act of India or LLP / firm registered under the respective Acts of India. |
| 5 | 7. Eligibility Criteria | 12 | NA | 1 The OEM/SI should have implemented market surveillance systems and provided continuous support post implementation for at least 1 Central Bank or 1 Regulator or 1 Self-Regulatory Organization (SRO) which have the mandate for market surveillance, in any of the G-20 countries, in the following market(s) -
— Fixed income and interest rate derivatives
— Forex and forex derivatives
—Money market
The name of the bidder (SI and/ or OEM) needs to be in sync with the credential letters / contract copies, exceptions may be made in case of divesture, M&A | Do the OEM and SI both separately need to qualify for the mentioned criteria? If only one needs to qualify, is it mandatory that the prime bidder must be qualifying? | Please read OEM/SI as "OEM or SI" |
| 6 | 7. Eligibility Criteria | 12 | NA | Documentation Required: Contract copy between the prime bidder and its client and documentary evidence proving project value | 1 Bidder might not be able to furnish the client contracts due to client confidentiality norms. Would client credential letters (as mentioned in 3A) mentioning the scope of work and successful completion suffice? | Please refer to corrigendum. |
| 7 | 7. Eligibility Criteria | 13 | NA | Proof of SI and OEM partnership | Can the bidders be provided the opportunity to present partnership proof at RFP submission stage? | As per EOI. |
| 8 | 1. Schedule | 5 | NA | Schedule | It is requested that EOI submission date be extended to allow the OEMs/ SI to appropriately collate and meet the eligibility criteria | Please refer to corrigendum. |
| 9 | 2. Purpose | 6 | 2.4 | However, the final specifications shall only be prescribed in the Request for Proposal (RFP). Respondents are encouraged to give additional suggestions and alternative designs and approaches in their EOI response. | Can the proposed solution/approach be modified to provide workforce for analysis and reporting of generated alerts to discern the false positives from the overall set of alerts generated by the system? | No workforce will be required by the bidder to be provided for analysis and reporting of generated alerts. However, suggestions could be provided as part of EOI response. |
| 10 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.7 | Provision for integration with various data sources (structured and unstructured) that are both internal and external to RBI, trading platforms, news feeds, and other relevant entities etc. along with some of the RBI applications | Will the data sources conform to the bidder data / file specification for the data format for ingestion by the surveillance system? | Data format for ingestion will be specified in RFP. |
| 11 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.3 | Effective monitoring of compliance to regulatory guidelines through analysis of data and generation of exception reports. | Request bank to clarify, What kind of Compliance reports will they be looking at? Request bank to clarify on standard and exception reports. | Compliance monitoring will typically include compliance of market participants to regulatory guidelines of RBI. More details will be specified in RFP. |
| 12 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.6 | Provision to reconstruct all trading activity to replay the full order/quote schedule. | Please elaborate the requirement for better understanding | Replay of order book is a standard market surveillance functionality. The activity will pertain to reconstruction of order book from the market activities. |
| 13 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.3 | Effective monitoring of compliance to regulatory guidelines through analysis of data and generation of exception reports. | Effective monitoring of compliance to regulatory guidelines – assume this is wrt to compliance of banks / FIs to regulatory guidelines of RBI? Like capital adequacy, LCR trends of banks based on submissions made to RBI? Frequency of such monitoring? | Compliance monitoring will typically include compliance of market participants to regulatory guidelines of RBI. More details will be specified in RFP. |
| 14 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.1 | Capability to identify market abuse and generate alerts by processing large number of data points (including data from trade repository) across products and markets. | An overall list of market segments and products that the IMSS shall be covering would be required. | As per EOI. |
| 15 | 4. Business Requirements | 9 | 4.12 | The proposed system shall be deployed on-premises | Can you clarify if local 1st level IT support is required from the vendor? | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 16 | 9. Evaluation of EOI | 15 | 9.3 | Bidders should be capable of supplying, configuring, integrating and supporting the products / services mentioned in Section 4. | 1 Apart from hardware deployment, would there be requirement of a technical workforce from OEM or SI post deployment of system for support and maintenance services of the IMSS? If yes, would need further details. | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 17 | 4. Business Requirements | 9 | 4.12 | The proposed system shall be deployed on-premises | Is a hosted service feasible? | As per EOI, the proposed system shall only be deployed on-premises |
| 18 | 4. Business Requirements | 9 | 4.14 | The solution should provide features/ facilities for meeting various provisions of Information Technology Act, 2000 | Can you clarify which provisions of the Information Technology Act 2000 the application needs to conform to | Bidders are expected to comply with all the provisions of IT act 2000. |
| 19 | 4. Business Requirements | 9 | 4.8 | Capability to track system wide and entity-wise risk build-up and provide early warning | Most surveillance systems work with market data.
Does early warning mean a forecast for unprocessed data? Can RBI at this stage please provide definition of “early warning”? Or will RBI provide clarity on “early warning” at a later stage i.e. RFP? | Early warning will typically generate alerts based on analysis of historical data and identify impact of market events. It should also provide a mechanism to monitor entity-wise and market-wise exposure. Details will be specified in RFP. |
| 20 | 5. Technical Requirements | 10 | 5.3 | A separate test environment and development would be provided at the Data Centre (DC). The bidder is expected to replicate the DC environment in the Disaster Recovery (DR) and test environment in all respects (1:1) | Will RBI provide the test and development environment? Will successful bidder only need to replicate the same?
| This will be specified in RFP. |
| 21 | 5. Technical Requirements | 11 | 5.1 | The respondent is required to propose hardware to support the proposed solution. | Hardware required depends on the volume of data processed. Please provide some volumetric related information to propose the hardware required. | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 22 | 5. Technical Requirements | 11 | 5.4 | Successful bidder will have to follow RBI data centre guidelines, standards and policies while deploying and maintaining the solution. | Will RBI share these specific guidelines to successful bidders? Or can RBI point the successful bidder to the source to access these guidelines? | Yes, the details will be shared at later stages |
| 23 | 9. Evaluation of EOI | 15 | 9.5 | The bidders will have to arrange for a demonstration of the software proposed at Mumbai or at a location convenient to the Bank (within India) on a date to be specified by the Bank. All the specifications given in this document for the software/product and services will need to be demonstrated | Is the requirement of demonstrating a functioning hardware prototype to be run on test environment at RFP stage or EOI stage? | At EOI stage, we expect only product capability demonstration running either remotely or bidder’s laptop. |
| 24 | 9. Evaluation of EOI | 15 | 9 | Respondents will be shortlisted based on their EOI response and demonstration of the capabilities of the proposed solution to RBI. | What are the scores allocated for demonstration? | Refer Section 9 of EOI. |
| 25 | 9. Evaluation of EOI | 16 | 9.7 | Reporting capabilities. MIS reporting. Out of box repots (OOTB or off the shelf) | Can you provide clarification / details of each of the out of box reports required | Bidder is expected to showcase OOTB reports supported by their solution. Complete list of reports required will be given at RFP stage. |
| 26 | NA | NA | NA | | How is market abuse identified? What constitutes an alert? Which data points need to be considered? Are there defined scenarios for alert generation or these need to be identified by analysing data and patterns? | Market abuse is a commonly understood term across various jurisdictions. RBI has also broadly defined market abuse in Reserve Bank of India (Prevention of Market Abuse) Directions, 2019 dated March 15, 2019. Understanding of market abuse scenarios and potential alert triggers is expected from the bidder. Details will be specified in RFP. |
| 27 | NA | NA | NA | | We would also be keen to understand what kind of agencies / vendors are working with RBI on this. | Details will be shared only with the final successful bidder at the implementation stage. |
| 28 | 3. Introduction and Objectives | 7 | NA | The objectives of the proposed system are broadly:
1. Surveillance of markets regulated by the Bank
2. Trend analysis: MIS reports, standard & ad-hoc reporting
3. Compliance monitoring | Is RBI looking for all the required capabilities like data integration, AI & ML, dashboards/reports, exception generation on a single technology solution or a platform to ensure seamless integration? | Bidders are expected to propose best fit solution. |
| 29 | 4. Business Requirements | 9 | 4.7 | Provision for integration with various data sources (structured and unstructured) that are both internal and external to RBI, trading platforms, news feeds, and other relevant entities etc. along with some of the RBI applications. | Is RBI looking for integration with unstructured data sources only or applying text based AI and ML capabilities on the data and generating triggers/insights | Bidders are expected to propose best fit solution. |
| 30 | 4. Business Requirements | 10 | 4.1 | Advanced data analytics/processing capabilities. Artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities are desirable | Is RBI looking for category leading AI and ML solutions which have been rated in the top leader's category by independent analysts like Forrester | Bidders are expected to propose best fit solution. |
| 31 | 3. Introduction and Objectives | 7 | NA | The system should be comprehensive, integrated, scalable, functionally rich and support parameterisation. | Request bank to help us with the scalability they are looking for, This is with respect to limitation with the traditional architecture while adopting the cloud native and micro-services enabled architecture would help bank to scale faster, ease of managing applications and application portability which would help in higher uptime/Availability and reduce go to market time for RBI. | Bidder can propose the optimum solution/ product architecture. However the solution shall be deployed On-premise only. |
| 32 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.1 | Capability to identify market abuse and generate alerts by processing large number of data points (including data from trade repository) across products and markets | Please provide a list of market abuse alerts that you would see as an essential requirement for the IMSS? | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 33 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.1 | Capability to identify market abuse and generate alerts by processing large number of data points (including data from trade repository) across products and markets | Does the Reserve Bank of India have any specific market abuse alert requirements beyond that seen as a standard market offering? | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 34 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | Figure 1 | Overview of the proposed IMSS | Please provide further details of the data sources as illustrated in Figure 1 in the EOI | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 35 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | Figure 1 | Overview of the proposed IMSS | Roughly how many data interfaces will be required to be in place for the IMSS? | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 36 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.7 | Provision for integration with various data sources (structured and unstructured) that are both internal and external to RBI, trading platforms, news feeds, and other relevant entities etc. along with some of the RBI applications | Can you specify whether the interface will be real-time or EOD batch for the data that is being sourced? | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 37 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.3 | Effective monitoring of compliance to regulatory guidelines through analysis of data and generation of exception reports | Please provide an indication of;
- Current daily message volumes that would be passed through the IMSS for surveillance purposes
- Anticipated daily message volumes over the next 3 years | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 38 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.3 | Effective monitoring of compliance to regulatory guidelines through analysis of data and generation of exception reports | Is RBI expecting to monitor transactions in real-time, including the ability to generate alerts in real-time? | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 39 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.7 | Provision for integration with various data sources (structured and unstructured) that are both internal and external to RBI, trading platforms, news feeds, and other relevant entities etc. along with some of the RBI applications. | Request bank to Clarify, What would be point of entry for data ingestion like through batch process, SFTP or through API interaction? | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 40 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4 | Data Sources - External Agencies | Request some more clarity on the external sources and the kind of data available to RBI. | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 41 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.7 | Provision for integration with various data sources (structured and unstructured) that are both internal and external to RBI, trading platforms, news feeds, and other relevant entities etc. along with some of the RBI applications. | As per our understanding, since the data sources are through multiple exchanges, news feeds, electronic trading platforms, depositories which might be external as well, which data sets and scenarios would be provided to us internally during testing and deployment of the system? | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 42 | 4. Business Requirements | 9 | 4.11 | Migration of existing/ legacy data. | Can you elaborate on the requirements for the migration of existing / legacy data? | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 43 | 4. Business Requirements | 10 | 4.11 | Migration of existing/ legacy data. | Please elaborate on the legacy data type and volumes. Also please explain the data captured in the tables | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 44 | NA | NA | NA | | Are there any known parameters against which market activity is tracked? | This will be specified in RFP. |
| 45 | 3. Introduction and Objectives | 7 | NA | The system should be comprehensive, integrated, scalable, functionally rich and support parameterisation. | Request bank to consider tightly integrated solution for e.g. Adopting containerised solution would help bank to easily look at containerised integration solution which supports API based integration and other ecosystem solutions. | Suggestions can be provided in the EOI. |
| 46 | 5. Technical Requirements | 10 | 5.2 | The Bank strives to adopt the global best practices including three tier architecture for all its applications and expects the proposed solution to align to these best practices. | While bank has given option to adopt to architecture of the proposed solution, Request bank to mandate new age platform to host all the applications i.e. containerized solution platform which would give bank the advantage of easy portability of applications, Scalability, tightly integrated. | Suggestions can be provided in the EOI. |
| 47 | 5. Technical Requirements | 10 | 5.2 | The Bank strives to adopt the global best practices including three tier architecture for all its applications and expects the proposed solution to align to these best practices. | While bank has given option to adopt to architecture of the proposed solution, Request bank to also look at cloud native & micro-services enabled architecture which would help bank to empower there developers to have agility and enable bank to adopt any analytics solutions going forward with high level of customization. | Suggestions can be provided in the EOI. |
| 48 | 3. Introduction and Objectives | 7 | NA | The Financial Markets Regulation Department (FMRD) undertakes surveillance of financial markets regulated by RBI under section 45W of the RBI Act, 1934, viz., government securities market, money market, foreign exchange market and markets for derivatives on interest rate, foreign exchange and credit. The department is proposing to implement a robust Integrated Market Surveillance System for augmenting its surveillance capacities. | 1 Is there a current IMSS implemented at RBI? If yes what are the specifications and the implementation approach of the current system? What are the current limitations and the data sources used by the current IMSS system? | Not required at this stage. |
| 49 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.7 | Provision for integration with various data sources (structured and unstructured) that are both internal and external to RBI, trading platforms, news feeds, and other relevant entities etc. along with some of the RBI applications | Will any direct contractual agreements be required between bidder and each of the data sources? | Not required at this stage. |
| 50 | 4. Business Requirements | 8 | 4.2 | Tracking market developments and monitoring of macroeconomic parameters | What are the trading hours for monitoring? | Not required at this stage |
| 51 | 4. Business Requirements | 9 | 4.12 | The proposed system shall be deployed on-premises | Can you provide details of your IT infrastructure requirements for the deployment of an on premise installation? | Not required at this stage |
| 52 | 7. Eligibility Criteria | 12 | NA | The OEM/SI should have implemented market surveillance systems and provided continuous support post implementation for at least 1 Central Bank or 1 Regulator or 1 Self-Regulatory Organization (SRO) which have the mandate for market surveillance, in any of the G-20 countries, in the following market(s)-
— Fixed income and interest rate derivatives
— Forex and forex derivatives
— Money market
The name of the bidder (SI and/ or OEM) needs to be in sync with the credential letters / contract copies, exceptions may be made in case of divesture, M&A | Can SI and OEM submit their implementation experience separately? | The relevant documents shall be submitted by the bidder. The Bank's evaluation committee may take a decision as deemed appropriate for the Bank. |
| 53 | NA | NA | NA | | Does RBI has preference for Bespoke or COTS application? | Bidders may propose best fit approach. |