What do the FIMA events represent to the data management community – why do people choose to attend?
They represent the opportunity for data management professionals to share information and find common ground about industry trends in an area of the business that is of mutual benefit and where we can find win-win solutions by joining up.

How have current market events impacted the data management community? Have data management projects suffered as a result of IT budget cutting?
Infrastructure investment is being carefully targeted towards achieving specific client solutions and business outcomes. There is less emphasis, for the time being, on projects with longer term return on investment but the drive continues for progress towards strategic goals.

What lessons have been learned in the field of data management since FIMA 2007 in London?
High quality and consistent data is even more valuable in turbulent markets and even faster and more accurate response is necessary in order to satisfy client requirements and manage risk.

What are the likely hot topics for this year’s event in your opinion?
A consensus on where investment dollars are being targeted. An example is the extent to which asset pricing and issuer risk reporting have a higher priority now as a result of market turbulence. Another might be to what extent OTC derivatives instrument data is being integrated with traditional instrument data processes.

Learning about the degrees of success achieved by firms that have created offshore centralised global data management hubs, differentiating between those types of data which have been successful, and those which have been less successful, and the underlying reasons for this.

Has the increased regulatory focus on areas such as counterparty risk and fair value accounting impacted the data management industry?
Fund administration pricing and valuation is already extremely highly regulated. The market turbulence has definitely led to a greater emphasis on ensuring that the most liquid and consistent prices are sourced, validated and used.

In what ways could the providers of data and data management technology better support financial institutions in their data management goals?
To proactively support the shift towards establishing non-proprietary data standards, and the convergence of the market towards those standards, so that the industry can reduce duplication and inconsistencies and reduce the cost base over time.

What are the new challenges facing the industry in the data management space and how can these be overcome?
Costs – reduce duplication and licensing cost by developing non-proprietary standards. Scalability – identify and resolve business process bottlenecks that are caused by poor or inconsistent data (or that can be solved by high quality and standardised data).