Too much of a good thing?

That’s the growing sentiment many financial institutions have about their data.

Like them, you may be battling a constant state of information overload. But tomorrow’s winners will be those institutions that can find a way to get on top of their data and tap into the extraordinary value to be found there.

Data matters

Done right, data management and analysis can bring multiple rewards:

1. Client growth and retention – Complete and accurate information on client risk profiles, interactions, fee structures, product margins, reasoning, etc. will help you identify and segment target clients, determine the best products to sell them and ensure they are serviced the right way. And by being more responsive to clients’ individual needs, you can retain and hopefully expand those relationships.
2. Investment performance – Sophisticated performance attribution and analytics can provide a powerful feedback loop, giving you valuable insights into how to improve returns going forward. Used in reporting, they can also tell clients a compelling story about your investment strategy.
3. Risk management – Similarly, feeding risk analytics with reliable and timely data can help you monitor exposures and make better investment decisions that mitigate the associated risks and enhance performance.
4. Driving cost efficiencies – Automating data collection and dissemination throughout your IT infrastructure will speed up reconciliations processes, reduce client and management reporting times and costs, feed timely information to the front office and help you meet your regulatory compliance obligations. It will free staff to focus on more value-generating tasks, and give you the scalability to grow your business without ramping up headcount.
5. Digital readiness – Only through tight data control and an integrated infrastructure can you increase your automation, improve data quality and service clients the way they demand.

The data centric approach

So how do you organise your data infrastructure to maximise these opportunities?

To date, I’ve not found a single, silver bullet. But there are some fundamentals.

At the heart of them is an automated, integrated and flexible data hub.

By acquiring, normalising and enriching the data you need within a central data store, it becomes much easier to manage the output quality and consistency. From there, you can then distribute the cleansed data to your downstream systems. And that will give you an effective platform from which to drive your future growth^*.

^* To find out more on achieving better data management, see our white papers Data Services: How to Keep the Lifeblood Flowing and Lessons from the Front Line: How to Achieve Data Centricity and Avoid Common Data Strategy Mistakes.