Solving for Symbology Discord
A new white paper on the challenges of identity and their importance to the financial industry
Solving For Symbology Discord, The Identity Challenge
High profile events such as those that took place in 2008 - and more recent ones such as those experienced by JP Morgan and UBS - reminded the industry of the challenges involved when an aggregate or consolidated view across positions is needed. Even after decades of industry changes and technology advances such challenges still subsist due in part to the incompatibility of core data symbols.
These core data symbols: security identification, counterparty identification and price discovery, were never developed to work efficiently and effectively on an enterprise/global scale. This was not a huge problem back in 1993 but with regulatory pressure and the focus on risk management firms today need the ability to assess risk. They need a view of their aggregate and consolidated positions across the enterprise ? regardless of silos, departments and disparate technology systems.
Despite sweeping changes to markets over the past two decades, what has not changed dramatically is the patchwork approach to security identification in data that comes from vendors, exchanges, buy-side and sell- side participants. Over the years, many ?standards? and competing identification systems have been created. This multiplied by the number of specialized silos within a financial firm means that identification methods remain fragmented. Today, such legacy presents financial firms with some major challenges ? the difficulty in creating holistic views over the data, the cost of aligning content sets and the risk of missed opportunity that comes as a result.
In order to assess risk and find opportunity we need better ways to link and navigate information. These diverse information items have been likened to the sequences of genetic material that make up the building blocks of DNA and the challenge presented to the modern day financial services firm is to effectively map this data onto a corporate genome that will facilitate the insight required of investment and risk decisions. Our new white paper, Solving for Symbology Discord, The Identity Challenge offers insight into the issues and a framework for solutions.
Read it here.