Data Integration a way towards consolidation and reduction

At the FIMA conference this week in London, where I was speaking and chairing an afternoon session, the issue of Data Integration was debated, pulled apart and assessed by a whole range of expert people representing all links in the industry data chain. After two arduous days the results were disappointing. Everyone agrees that there is a ‘mass' or should that be ‘mess' of data that financial services firms buy for huge amounts of money, only to spend almost as much on data cleansing what they have purchased. The implementation of MiFID is increasing the volume of data and the sources that are issuing it.

The problem is not a technology issue as the systems available to the market are good enough to assemble the required data, condense it where necessary and provide it where it is needed. The corporate actions systems vendors are all able to achieve this within their systems; this was proved during the 2008 benchmarking project and highlighted in the subsequent report.

So with data integration functionality available and the use of message standards increasing worldwide, it looks only a matter of time before the integration of data starts the process of consolidation and then reduction. The ISO20022 initiatives beginning to flicker into life should help the process of consolidation and reduction as more tier two and below firms on the buy side of the industry become included in the data chain.