About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

A-Team Report: Complex Instruments Demand Overhaul of Data Management by Buy Side

Subscribe to our newsletter

Following last month’s webinar on derivatives and data management, A-Team Group and EDM vendor GoldenSource have released a report on the specific challenges faced by global reference data managers in buy side firms, with a particular focus on the impact of OTC derivatives. The report involved discussions with a sample of senior individuals directly involved in buy side reference data management from the top 100 asset management firms, largely from the UK and US. Of these respondents, 70% had global data responsibilities and another 15% had regional responsibility.

The three main forces driving a re-evaluation of data management identified by the study comprise: business risk, centralised data management and OTC derivatives. With regards to business risk, increased regulation has created a chain reaction of proactive risk management at these firms. Data is now considered to be an asset that the firm can leverage to quantify exposure and make it easier to comply.

In accordance with last year’s study on the same topic, most buy side respondents classified themselves as having centralised data management or decentralised data management with central controls. This year, 28% stated they were in transition to one of these two data management styles. The report indicates that derivatives in particular are causing firms to re-evaluate these centralised processes. Recent events, growing business demands and complex instruments have raised the bar for the flexibility, disciplines, and tools necessary to run an effective central data operation, the report states.

One respondent noted: “Derivatives are a caveat for us to look at processes again.” Another stated: “We need to centralise to meet the growing need of downstream applications, especially for derivatives. We have trouble handling that data in current systems.” A number of respondents felt they needed to provide a more systematic and robust solution than Excel for the downstream data management of derivatives before this data could be merged into a central database.

This uncertainty around how to manage the business-driven take-up of complex instruments is causing havoc with existing data management solutions, particularly older in-house systems, the report explains.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Are you making the most of the business-critical structured data stored in your mainframes?

Fewer than 30% of companies think that they can fully tap into their mainframe data even though complete, accurate and real-time data is key to business decision-making, compliance, modernisation and innovation. For many in financial markets, integrating data across the enterprise and making it available and actionable to everyone who needs it is extremely difficult....

BLOG

Regulatory Volatility Offers Opportunity to Mine Value from Compliance Data

A new era of regulatory change is presenting institutions with a golden opportunity to prosper from the troves of data they need to comply with reporting obligations. Information required by market overseers has value that goes beyond its obligatory use in disclosures and companies that put it to wider use stand to gain a competitive...

EVENT

Data Management Summit London

Now in its 16th year, the Data Management Summit (DMS) in London brings together the European capital markets enterprise data management community, to explore how data strategy is evolving to drive business outcomes and speed to market in changing times.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2025 – Thirteenth Edition

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a unique and practical guide to capital markets regulation, regulatory change, and the data and data management requirements of compliance across Europe, the UK, US and Asia-Pacific. This year’s edition lands at a moment of accelerating regulatory divergence and intensifying data focused supervision. Inside,...