Jason Warlond, Curium’s Head of Business Development, APAC, looks at the intrinsic value of investment data and the need for asset management organisations to build out their investment data intelligence:

The term “intelligence” can and has been defined in a number of ways.  If we look at the Oxford English Dictionary, it provides two definitions that I think are applicable.

• the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills
• the collection of information of military or political value

For our purposes I have adapted this a little to: Investment Data Intelligence – The collection of information and ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills in relation to Investment Data.

When talking about Enterprise Data Management and Data Governance, not enough emphasis is placed on Investment Data Intelligence.  But why is it important and how is it applicable?

Investment Data Intelligence maturity relates to an organisation’s ability to understand its data assets. Whilst this has some overlap with metadata management and data catalogues, it is broader than that.

Let us take a typical Investments data set of “Daily Holdings and Valuation”.   This data set contains Holdings and Valuation data, which will be a key pillar for many business functions.  However, there is a collection of information about this data set that when combined with the data itself constitutes Data Intelligence and is vitally important but often overlooked.  This can include information such as:

• A description and purpose for the data set
• A glossary for all attributes of the data set
• Where data is contained / persisted
• Its state i.e. not all data is equal.
  • Staged/Sandpit area
  • Mastered
  • Verified
  • Published etc.
• Its currency (when was it last updated or verified)
• Its accuracy (or quality scores)
• Its lineage – how was the data set constructed
• Its provenance – what source data was used to construct it
• Its ownership/stewardship/centre of excellence attributes
• Its data classification within the data set
  • PII rating, GDPR and other Regulatory Frameworks
  • Security classifications
• Consumption and usage patterns
• Etc.,

As can be seen, the humble “Daily Holdings and Valuation” data set has significantly more data relevant to it than the typical Stock/Portfolio/Date/Holding/Market Value attributes.

In many traditional EDM implementations, the data set is constructed, and users have access to the data within the data set.  However, only when the organisation has Data Intelligence can users fully understand the data set, trust it, and use if effectively.

Furthermore, Data Intelligence refers to the ability to acquire knowledge and this is best achieved via a platform that can:

• Be a single source of truth for Data Intelligence
• Provide self-service capabilities for both search as well as update of metadata
• Satisfies the dimensions of data quality:  Accuracy, Completeness, Consistency, Timeliness, Availability and Fitness for Purpose
• Builds its intelligence dynamically via discovery and integration with the EDM platform

The needs for Investment organisations to have Investment Data Intelligence maturity is more vital than ever in this current COVID environment as remote working makes self service capabilities mandatory to achieve efficiencies and reduce risk in the organisation.

Curium Data Systems Limited (CDSL) has an established and proven set of Best Practice principles and methodologies that have been applied with our Enterprise Data Management implementations including Data Intelligence.