More Financial Services Firms to Invest in Data Management to Improve Investment Decisions

"Nearly two thirds of financial services firms struggle to store, access and share data, and more than half are considering single data hubs to enhance their ability to make data-driven investment and business decisions."

To read the full article, follow this link. 

SEQVOIA's viewpoint:

Investment firms are under increasing pressure to make better use of data to inform their business and investment decisions. It's amazing that in the "age of data", how challenging they find this.

As the Business Wire article points out, two-thirds of investment firms say their research data is poorly managed or difficult to access. Investment professionals in the article express their frustration that research data is sorted in disparate systems and locations across their firms. Most complain they have insufficient tools, or non at all, to create timely, personalized and authoritative research for clients.

If investment analysts are unable to access and process data then their recommendations to portfolio managers and clients are unlikely to add value. In fact, they may destroy value.

Today, there is no technical impediment to data being stored in a single location and being immediately available to investment, risk and compliance professionals. Better access to and control over data will also help to show how an investment decision was reached, by creating a data trail which justifies decisions to regulators as well as fund stakeholders.

The age of data is fantastic for investment firms, the challenge now is to access and share data productively. It can be done.