A-Team Insight Exchange is a new event series for 2010, which will combine A-Team’s expertise in financial markets IT with thought leadership from world-class technology innovators and practical experience from financial market practitioners.
The regulatory scrutiny of data quality is driving firms to join in with the second wave of outsourcing that is sweeping the market, according to Colin Close, CEO of hosted data management solution vendor Netik. Close reckons that firms should not wait for standards to be set, either by the regulator or bodies such as the EDM Council, before tackling their data management challenges and that a new level of pragmatism is evident in the market.

















The data management community could potentially learn a lot about standardisation from the world of performance measurement, suggested Corné Reiners, head of both FSC performance measurement and data management at Robeco Asset Management, to delegates to TSAM in London this week. A lot of cooperation has been achieved within the area of performance measurement between asset management firms and this led to the development of Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS), which have achieved great traction in the market, he contended.
They may differ in their opinions in how to go about effecting change (see last year’s FIMA standards panel for proof, see
Since the launch of its AC Invest solution in October last year (see our coverage of the launch event
The challenge of getting a whole firm “into the same boat” and understanding the true benefits of a data management project requires strong leadership and governance from the outset, said Hans Lux, enterprise data architect at UBS Global Asset Management, to the delegation in attendance at TSAM 2010 earlier this week. The importance of data governance is far from a new concept, but Lux stressed that firms should use the audit trail to their advantage in the current environment where regulatory scrutiny is so intense.
Simon Tweddle, director of risk management at Mizuho International, is a firm believer in assigning data ownership in order to effectively monitor data quality across a financial institution. Speaking at last week’s Thomson Reuters event in London, Tweddle explained that Mizuho has recently put the management of its global reference and market data back on the agenda in order to ensure its regional and local operations are all working from the same set of data.
Financial services firms are being faced with a huge number of on the hoof ad hoc reporting requirements from the regulatory community and this is putting significant pressure on their data infrastructures, said Kris Bhattacharjee, global head of regulatory policy and reporting at Barclays Capital. He explained to attendees to Thomson Reuters’ roundtable earlier this week that BarCap has been compelled to invest in its data infrastructure to meet these pressures because the business and regulators are both looking for more granular data.



