HSBC Securities Services is set to launch Data Mesh, a new data platform that will allow clients to select specific trade data.
HSBC Securities Services’ data strategy is focused on ‘data as a service’, which provides data on-demand to clients. Within this service, there is a key component called the ‘Data Mesh’.
Data Mesh is an analytical data design based on data lake technology. Data sets are grouped into common business domains, like a Service Mesh, and then it is stored within a Data lake thus combining a Service Mesh with a data lake. This allows HSBC to store massive amounts of data, including terabytes and petabytes.
Currently, the data is stored in HSBC’s internal cloud but the bank is looking to move it to external cloud providers in each of the different regions of operation.
HSBC’s Duncan Cooper, head of data product for HSBC Securities Services, explained that this concept is known as ‘sharding’.
According to Cooper, there are multiple advantages of the cloud but the first and foremost one for HSBC is the ability to react to business needs quickly.
Additionally, the cloud takes away the dependence of storage allowing availability to store huge amounts of data.
Cooper noted that HSBC plans to bring up all of the HSBC Securities Services data into one-layered data as a service. Data Mesh will produce that data and expose it out to clients.
In terms of use cases, Cooper highlighted that HSBC has multiple accounting systems and when operated, a net asset value (NAV) is produced.
NAVs exist in different formats and different data structures, but when brought into Data Mesh, HSBC consolidates it into a standardised formated NAV and then exposes it out to clients.
Clients will be able to receive data from their NAV regardless of the underlying technology that it is pulled from.
Cooper also affirmed that transfer agency data is high on HSBC’s priorities right now with two of its three transfer agency systems now onboard, with the aim to have the last one onboarded by the end of the year.
Also in the pipeline in this space, HSBC Securities Services plans to implement ‘Amazon-style data’, which means that when clients consume data, such as NAV validation data, HSBC Securities Services will recommend other data sets that they can take with it.
“Instead of expecting clients to understand what they need to consume, we are giving them the option to take additional data sets that they might not realise we produce,” Cooper said.
Commenting on the importance of data, he added: “The current pandemic has accelerated the pressures that were already there. Everybody knows they need more data and they need to know more about that data. We are a digital-first business; everything we consume is data and everything we produce is digital data. But we also need to think about the data on the data: how much, how often, and how quickly we produce it.”
“We also need to think about the insights of that data that we can look at. The great advantage of the Data Mesh is that the data continues to grow without having to delete anything. That drive to get that information in the past three months has grown significantly.”
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