David Miller, Director Credit Systems, Bank of Scotland

1. What do you believe is the main value of the FIMA events to the data management community?

At the moment FIMA is the principal forum that brings together financial institutions, and gives them the ability to discuss the current issues in data management. It will be interesting to see how FIMA develops as the EDM Council, which is also a forum for financial institutions with the vendors in the background, continues to evolve. At the moment the two have different approaches, but I could see their approaches getting closer and closer.

2. Do you think the industry has made progress in its data management goals since FIMA 2006 in London? In what areas?

Visibility, communication and education has improved. If some financial institutions come up with good examples of how they are making progress, other firms want to emulate them, and you effectively create industry standards of best practice. We are showing where the bar is, and what we now want to do is raise the bar.

Reference data management is improving. Metrics are not.

3. What are the biggest inhibitors to further success in data management in your view?

The biggest inhibitor is cultural change, by which I mean changing the way your people behave. What is required is business process re-engineering, and change like that cannot be pushed through quickly.

4. How do you think the industry should seek to overcome them?

The answer is to get buy-in. Get people on-side. Show them the cost of bad data and how it impacts the bottom line. Show cause and effect. We are certainly achieving success at this.

5. In what ways could the providers of data and data management technology better support financial institutions in their data management goals?

This is a very interesting issue. At many conferences you see the various vendors showing their wares. We held a conference recently where we had vendors in the audience, listening to what the customers want. There is a big difference between providing solutions that you think your customers want, and providing solutions that they have told you they want.

6. What one thing could the industry do better to encourage a step-change in progress towards improved data management?

To my mind, we have got to get metrics out there to show cause and effect. The hold up on metrics is simply that they are too hard. The process of data capture is where people key it in. There is then a process of cleansing and validation, before the data is fed to people who make decisions on it. In another silo are the operational risk events that occur as a result of bad data. And in yet another are the complaints as a result of bad data. Because those silos are not joined up, firms don’t know the cost of bad data, and if you don’t know the impact of bad data, how can you assess how much to invest to improve it, and work out what the return on your investment will be?

Somehow, you’ve got to join up those silos and get them talking to each other. The EDM Council is doing good work around metrics, but it’s at an early stage. Also, it is mainly focusing at the moment on metrics around market data rather than counterparty data. We would certainly like to see it increase its focus on metrics for counterparty data.