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

Data Management – Why is it all so Difficult and Costly?

Subscribe to our newsletter

The financial industry spends $28.5 billion on externally sourced market data and a further $2-3 billion cleaning it up so that is can be used internally. Why is this so difficult and costly, and what can the industry and market participants do about it?

Peter Moss, CEO of the SmartStream Reference Data Utility (RDU), will discuss the problems of market data and some potential solutions during a keynote presentation at A-Team Group’s Data Management Summit in New York City next week on Thursday 19 September.

Moss suggests that in a market where products are defined by data and traded using data mechanisms, the data should be standardised – but this is not the case due to factors such as differences in securities identifiers, a lack of identifiers in some capital markets, data attributes represented differently across data sources, problems with classification, and different identifiers for market participants.

On top of these problems, Moss notes the fluidity of capital markets, in which products are created and dropped on a continuous basis, and the impact on equity data of a constant stream of corporate actions.

He says: “It is very difficult to maintain all the data that is required in a straightforward way across an organisation. The truth is that data standards are not precise enough in an environment where data comes from a huge number of sources. Data vendors pull some of the data together, but it is not possible for a firm to get all required data from one source, which becomes a challenge for the firm.”

As well as considering these challenges during his keynote, Moss will discuss industry initiatives and firms’ efforts to improve matters, and the potential of utilities to short circuit some of the problems and provide firms with cleansed data.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

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

17 June 2025 10:00am ET | 3:00pm London | 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 Minutes 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...

BLOG

Rethinking ‘Cloud First’: Why IT Leaders are Repatriating from Public Cloud

By Stewart Laing, chief executive, Asanti. Since 2013 “Cloud First” has been the guiding mantra for countless IT leaders, promising agility, scalability, and a low barrier to entry. Public cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform have touted their services as one-size-fits-all solutions, offering organisations access to cutting-edge technology without substantial upfront...

EVENT

AI in Capital Markets Summit London

The AI in Capital Markets Summit will explore current and emerging trends in AI, the potential of Generative AI and LLMs and how AI can be applied for efficiencies and business value across a number of use cases, in the front and back office of financial institutions. The agenda will explore the risks and challenges of adopting AI and the foundational technologies and data management capabilities that underpin successful deployment.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...