I see Ignites Europe have picked up on the fact that data management is a key concern within the asset management community - with a steady stream of articles commenting on the challenges around data management.
I noticed the start of the trend in November of 2009 – with an article “Managers Worry Over Data Management” – this story focussed on the data challenges in the post-outsourcing environment and featured nuggets from Markus Ruetimann, group COO at Schroders, who expects a growing debate about data and the “acceptance of liabilities” over the next year.
He was quoted as saying…“Our clients want us to cover everything. Whether we do things internally or outsource, that is not their concern – they want us to stand firm if something goes wrong and to cover any losses.”
He was also quoted with “If the outsourced NAV is wrong and this leads to a loss, our outsource provider would compensate us. But what happens when on our distributors have another 20,000 unit holders? Where the buck stops is something I think we will hear more about next year.”
Dan Watkins, head of European operations at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, was also quoted in the same article and he agreed the use of data has become a priority for the industry, particularly with regard to client reporting.
“When you outsource some of your non-core functions, there is a multiple amount of data that is taken back in from those providers. Our top priority is having best-in-class client reporting and performance analysis for our clients, and data plays a vital part in that,” says Mr Watkins.
Later on in December 2009 there was an additional article “Data Management to Lead Outsourcing Trend” – as the article title would suggest the story focussed on the trend to out source data management functions in 2010.
This was then followed up with an article “Make Data Higher Priority, Managers Told“, with a really great webcast featuring Kim McFarland, COO Invesco and John Campbell of State Street – “Outsourcing Data Management“, finally last week we had another article “Data No Longer Top Manager Priority“.
I will explore the content of the latter stories in future posts.
Note – Ignites is a subscriber based publication – so the links to the full articles above will only work if you have a subscription.
I read Ignites (US) and Ignites Europe religiously each morning – so I could not recommend it highly enough – another great source of industry news is the FTfm (Europe) email and the MFWire (US) service.
Posted by Ronan Brennan 
