Meridian is the new Debt Recording and Management System (DRMS) designed by the Commonwealth Secretariat which is due for release in early 2019. The software will eventually replace CS-DRMS in a few years. Meridian is vastly superior to CS-DRMS both from functional and technological viewpoints.
- The software has advanced and improved functions and features including:
- Public and publicly guaranteed debt, lending portfolios as well as private sector external debt can be recorded, managed and analysed;
- The ability to model any workflow arrangement/institutional structure for debt management;
- Flexibility in adding and maintaining a wide range of financing products including any future financing products through the use of instrument templates;
- Organised around a central repository of data from which key stakeholders can access information. This ensures that real time data is always available even to remote offices;
- Driven by alerts and notifications, integrated with mail exchange systems to support the business workflow process;
- SWIFT payments as an optional payment mechanism and caters for messages in the SWIFT format;
- Accountability and transparency through data driven work flow; and
- Integrating with external systems to provide straight through processing and accurate data to stakeholders.
With respect to technology, Meridian is web-based which means that installations and giving access to it will be much easier than it was on CS-DRMS. Meridian will be made available to all countries from early 2019 and will cater for both SQL and Oracle sites. A migration tool will be provided to assist countries to move seamlessly from CS-DRMS to Meridian. Support for CS-DRMS will continue for a limited number of years after Meridian has been fully released.
