The Data Opportunity in Asset Management

The asset management industry has always consumed data. The quantitative investment management depended on plentiful supplies of the price data that financial markets produce. But prices and statistics are now being supplemented by social media, satellite and mobile telephone data that highlights investment opportunities rather than exploitable patterns in the markets. But data is no longer the preserve of portfolio managers. The growing quantities of digital information are now seen as vital to decision-makers in corporate strategy, sales and marketing, client service, risk management, distribution, operations and compliance as well. All large asset managers are now embarked on data projects designed to gather, normalise and integrate multiple internal and external data sources to raise process efficiency and employee productivity as well improve investment performance. The principal factor behind this growing interest is the need, as active investment strategies give way to lower margin passive investing, to control costs and lift output. This Future of Finance webinar will explore what asset managers are doing in data management, now and in the future.

Asset management is not immune to the effects of the growing volume of data available in digital form, and the growing proficiency of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at analysing it. Portfolio managers have always relied on financial information and price data, and quantitative managers have used mathematical models and data to make money since the 1970s. Portfolio management has certainly not lost interest in new sources of data as a way of generating alpha, as the growing use of AI to read financial and research reports, of social media, satellite and mobile telephone data, and of algorithmic trade execution tools attest. What is new is that data management and analytics are now spreading from the front office to the back and middle, and into sales and distribution as well. Sales and marketing teams are using data to segment distributors by client profile, location, purchasing channels, technological sophistication and profitability, and to identify cross-selling opportunities. Risk managers are using data to assess client concentration risk and predict redemptions by client, investment strategy, asset class, share class and fund, so portfolio managers can plan liquidity needs more accurately. Compliance officers are using data to prove to regulators that funds are delivering value-for-money, treating clients fairly and not being mis-sold, and to automate trade surveillance. Heads of operations are using data to ensure distributors are paid the right amounts and the firm is not over-charged. In fact, virtually every function within an asset management firm can lift its performance through cleaner, broader and properly analysed data. But what all these techniques depend upon is the ability of an asset management firm to access data from multiple internal and external sources, normalise, standardise, store and analyse it, and then make it available to the users in a convenient format. In developing these capabilities, no asset manager can yet claim complete success. But some have certainly progressed further and faster than others. This Future of Finance webinar will bring together data scientists, technologists, consultants and asset managers working in the field of data management in the asset management industry to explore how current progress can be accelerated.

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