Risk & Compliance

The current financial climate has meant that risk management and compliance requirements are never far from the minds of the boards of financial institutions. In order to meet the slew of regulations on the horizon, firms are being compelled to invest in their systems in order to cope with the new requirements.

Data management is an integral part of this endeavour, as it represents the building blocks of any form of risk management or regulatory reporting system. Only by first understanding the instruments being traded and the counterparties involved in these trades can an institution hope to be able to get a handle on its risk exposure. The fall of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing chaos was proof enough of the data quality issues still facing the industry in this respect.

Regulators are demanding more and more data transparency from all players in the financial markets and this has meant that the ability to access multiple data silos has become essential. A siloed mentality towards data will no longer be acceptable, as these regulators seek a holistic view of positions and the relationships between counterparties.

All of this represents a significant challenge to the data management community, given that there are standards lacking in many areas, for example business entity identification. But with great challenges come tremendous opportunities to solve data management issues that have been in the background for far too long.