Data’s position as a critically important subject in the financial markets has finally been recognised by both the regulatory community and the industry at large, said Jon Robson, president of Thomson Reuters’ Enterprise division, to attendees to the vendor’s data roundtable event in London earlier this week. “The financial markets are all about content and data is a core asset of a financial institution. Firms have recognised this as they face the onslaught of new regulations and transparency requirements,” he explained.
The transformational approach required to deal with the inadequacies of firms’ current data infrastructures has been recognised by the industry at large, according to Robson. “This can be evidenced by the arrival of chief data officers (CDOs) in a number of large financial institutions, for example. These individuals have been charged with dealing with the increasing volumes of real-time, pricing and reference data and integrating this data into the front middle and back office environments,” he elaborated. “There is an increasing demand to better orchestrate content management.”
And this is where Thomson Reuters is hoping to come in. The vendor has gone through a lengthy integration and rationalisation process as a result of its merger, and has recently relaunched its enterprise data management platform on the market. This week’s event was used as a platform to launch the Enterprise platform for data management, in collaboration with the vendor’s launch partners Accenture, Detica, Microsoft and Xenomorph.
It also highlighted the findings of a recent survey sponsored by Thomson Reuters that indicates technology budgets for data management are beginning to thaw. According to the 100 survey respondents (who ranged from those involved in data functions to front office executives), 77% intend to increase their spend on data quality and consistency this year. Moreover, a further 32% said this would be a significant increase in spending.
Unsurprisingly, risk management data integration was cited as a key factor by 87% of firms, who indicated they are looking to integrate data repositories into risk management. Enterprise data management (EDM) was also a popular approach to the data challenge, with 63% citing that they were close or very close to achieving a single golden copy for their trading and transaction type data in particular.
So, it seems that EDM vendors may experience a healthy uptick in sales this year, following a fairly dismal couple of years. Thomson Reuters is certainly hoping so. Check back next week for the full story on the revamped platform and our interview with global head of the Enterprise platform Jason du Preez.
