Opportunities (Let's Get Lots of Data)

Regulations such as the US Dodd-Frank Act, Volcker Rule, CCAR stress tests and Enhanced Prudential Supervision standards set restrictions financial services firms say dampen their ability to increase value for investors. But these rules are creating opportunities for firms' data operations departments, according to participants in the Virtual Roundtable in this report.

"The focus on data integrity has put data operations on notice," says GFT's Alan Morley. The regulations demand greater data oversight. Therefore, firms and their providers have to develop information sources, vouch for data integrity and build structures to report data to authorities.

Raising the quality of data is also necessary for compliance with all these regulations, says Dilip Krishna of Deloitte. This has the ancillary benefit, often talked about, of improving the cost profile for firms' data operations, he adds. And cost and efficiency are important, as Morley's colleague at GFT, Michael Engelman, says in the Roundtable. So, even for the business side, regulatory compliance can support business strategy goals, as SIX Financial Information's Jacob Gertel says.

Regulation is not only producing these effects and spurring this activity, it's also raising the urgency of taking these actions to find and manage more data, as State Street's David Blaszkowsky says in our Q&A, while Alain Robert-Dautun of Sycomore Asset Management — the Paris firm with nearly €3 billion in assets — recalls in the Roundtable that just responding to audit requirements back in 2008 led the firm to build data capabilities that have bolstered its data quality and analytics. Regulatory compliance truly is producing opportunities to get more data and raising the bar for all data obtained.