There are still obstacles to overcome if the financial services industry is to take full advantage of big data, according to delegates at ITAS Luxembourg.
In a survey during a panel session, 100 percent of respondents agreed that big data will continue to play a role in the industry, but when asked to identify the biggest obstacles for financial services in leveraging the advantages of big data, opinions were split.
A small majority of 34 percent said the main issue is a lack of understanding, appetite and vision, while 28 percent were more concerned about the availability of data.
A quarter of respondents thought the biggest obstacle would be regulations and know-your-client rules, while 13 percent highlighted IT infrastructure as an issue.
Dan Cwenar, general manager for data and analytics solutions at Broadridge, and a conference panellist, argued that the real issue is what to do with the data when it is available, saying the industry is “drowning in data, and desires intelligence from that data”.
He also suggested that often, even when data is received, it is inaccurate, meaning a lot of investment in cleaning and making sense of data.
Another panellist, Ruaraidh Thomas, managing director at DST, suggested that while some challenges are industry-specific, other regulatory issues apply to all industries, adding that data is often not properly looked at, or used to best effect. He added that any technology is only “useful if you know why you want it”.
He said: “We need to ensure we get the right building blocks in place and that is the biggest challenge.”
Thomas continued to say that there are challenges in understanding the data that firms have and getting it into a useable state, before thinking about what it can be used for, saying “the biggest question is how”, before the industry should worry about the “why”.
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