Kingland is responding to financial institutions’ growing desire to use and manage their data to better effect and greater efficiency with the provision of solutions including artificial intelligence (AI) and text analytics. It is also focusing on firms’ ongoing challenges around core functionality such as entity data management for Know Your Customer (KYC), enterprise risk management, understanding large volumes of data, and delivering on cost programmes.
The company has also expanded its strength in working with large enterprises through the recent addition of former DTCC executive Ron Jordan to the new role of strategic vice president, strategic accounts and partnerships. Jordan is also leading a strategic partner programme and extends Kingland’s presence on the East coast where he is based – Kingland is headquartered in Iowa.
Jordan also brings expertise on the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) to Kingland, having previously led the Consolidated Tape Association, an association of US exchanges overseeing the provision of trades and quotes to data vendors. At Kingland, Jordan will work with Finra and industry participants to make sure the CAT, which has already been established, moves forward in a beneficial way for the industry.
Jordan says: “DTCC has worked with Kingland since 2012, when it used the company to develop the GMEI legal entity identifier (LEI) utility for DTCC. I got to know the company and its technology capabilities, and will initially focus on the CAT, potential strategic partners, and client opportunities.”
Technology use cases
To ensure it is servicing clients’ key needs, Kingland reached out to towards 30 firms in the past couple of months to explore potential use cases of its technology. Tony Brownlee, president of the company, says the outcome included monitoring global risk, a better understanding of data and risk, ability to identify Libor documents across thousands of documents, how to improve service for clients, and how to achieve data efficiency in large banks with thousands of employees all using data.
Kingland’s entity and enterprise data management solutions fulfil many of these use cases, while its latest development, text analytics, breaks boundaries to fulfil other use cases by reading and analysing information in the same way as, or even better than, humans.
Brownlee explains: “This is pretty incredible technology. We have trained language models to digest any type of document, read it and highlight whatever you want to know in near real time.” Text analytics plays into Kingland’s focus on core enterprise management problems and its acknowledgement that all banks have slightly different technology and data requirements. Brownlee comments: “There are still a lot of core enterprise management problems that could be solved with text analytics, for example understanding hierarchy and relationship data. These are difficult, but important problems.”
Kingland’s solutions can be used individually or together to provide innovation for large enterprises that need customised rather than point solutions. Brownlee says: “Every bank is different, there are nuances such as size, geography and systems, so each bank needs core capabilities coupled to the art of the possible to do its best. We can help here.”
The company is also investing in data security as clients move to the cloud and says data privacy challenges, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, are now a base capability and will support upcoming data privacy regulation in California and any following federal rules. As Brownlee points out, securing enterprise data is a hot topic and can be delivered using Kingland’s entity data and text analytics solutions.
Looking ahead
Kingland is on a roll at the moment, with growth leading to new hires adding to its team of around 250, expansion on the East coast, and an office in London on the radar to support global clients, many of which are headquartered in New York or London. While no partners have yet been disclosed, Jordan will be naming names soon with a view to coupling specialist expertise with Kingland’s solutions capabilities.
Brownlee concludes: “This is a great time for Kingland and there is good potential for more growth.”
To find out more about Kingland’s capabilities, join A-Team Group’s Data Management Summit in New York City on September 16, 2019, where Tony Brownlee will detail the company’s innovation around data management and text analytics.
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