Data governance, risk data aggregation, regulatory challenge, utility models, data architecture, Know Your Customer (KYC), data as an asset and machine learning were just some of the data management topics discussed at last week’s A-Team Group Data Management Summit in New York City.

The conference also hosted the introduction of A-Team’s BCBS 239 handbook, which provides an overview of the regulation as well as detail on best practice data management for compliance. If you didn’t pick up a hard copy of the handbook at the event, you can download a copy here.

Opening the conference, keynote speaker Ivan Matviak, head of data, analytics and software at State Street, made a presentation entitled ‘Leaving the Laggards Behind: How to Become a Data Leader’. He described the use of data in improving investment decisions, managing risk, achieving regulatory compliance and reducing costs, as well as developments around data, such as digitisation, intra-day demand, regulatory requirements and new technologies, that are making data increasingly valuable to business and, in some cases, a competitive advantage.

Matviak also touched on research carried out by State Street that identifies data starters, data movers and data innovators, and noted that only about a third of participants in the research were identified as data innovators. Looking forward, he registered the need for financial firms to respond to the millennial generation, which wants to interact with data in a more mobile, personalised and visual way, and suggested we are likely to see a new generation of leaders emerging in the investment management industry.

Dessa Glasser, chief data officer, asset management at JP Morgan Chase, built on some of Matviak’s observations in a second keynote entitled ‘Realising the Vision of Data as an Asset’. She compared today’s role of data as a business asset to its role just five to 10 years ago as part of back-office functions, and considered how new technologies are supporting different ways of looking at data and allowing technology and business to work together to unlock its value. To be competitive, she said firms must be open to leveraging new technologies and working with the millennials that will use it.

From a chief data officer’s perspective, Glasser described the need to think of data as a business asset, or perhaps a fourth dimension of business, and work with business partners to understand what they want to achieve and how data can support their needs.

The conference’s platinum sponsor keynote was made by Adam Devine, vice president of product marketing at WorkFusion, a specialist in the automation of high volume manual work. His presentation, ‘What does it mean to digitise operational processes, and what enterprise tech stack delivers it?’, started with some startling statistics, such as the $10 trillion spent on knowledge workers handling simple data.

Devine went on to discuss the potential of data automation, supported by capabilities such as machine learning, to significantly reduce financial firms’ operational costs while achieving regulatory compliance. He finished with a persuasive example of the return on investment that can be made from the use of smart process application

platforms and recommended that firms should pilot these types of platforms using high volume, manually intensive and repetitive processes to discover their benefits.

Panel discussions at the New York Data Management Summit covered regulation, centralising KYC data to gain a single view of customers, the risk aggregation requirements of BCBS 239, implementing an effective data governance strategy – and more!

To secure a place at A-Team’s May 2016 New York City Data Management Summit register here.