(L-R) Gulati and Pandurangan.

What does being a data-centric organisation mean in modern institutional investments? Is it the lifeblood of an organisation and if so, how do you manage it?

That was the question posed in a recent Clear Path Analysis webinar, “Utilising data volumes: driving profitability, efficiency and risk management”, which has now been published as a report in conjunction with Rimes Technologies.

A data-centric organisation is one in which people, technologies and processes are designed and developed with a clear intent of generating relevant information and utilising it collaboratively to enhance the business success of an organisation. There is a distinct difference between data-centric and data-driven, which is when a company has the capability, tools and culture to gather and analyse data in order to inform better business decisions.

In the report, several industry leaders, including Gayathri Pandurangan Senior Director, Head of Innovation Engineering, KPMG, and Sahem Gulati Head of Strategy & Consulting, M&G, looked at these issues as what the challenges of scaling, managing the evolution for the product mix managers are, as well as the asset allocation profile for the asset owners including private markets - and ESG - from a data architecture standpoint.

Gulati picked up on the issues surrounding how one would differentiate strategic for public versus private markets and the contrasting needs they might have.

“When it comes to private markets, data is not readily available so sourcing the data is a real challenge and something that organisations have to think about."

“There are distinct challenges between public and private markets and then when you add the complexity of ESG or sustainability it adds further problems into the mix,” said Gulati.

“When it comes to private markets, data is not readily available so sourcing the data is a real challenge and something that organisations have to think about in terms of where they are going to get the data, how are they going to bring it in and quality assurance. He added that on the public side there are far more sophisticated data offerings in terms of fees as well as other issues.

“Distinctly in terms of how these two parts of the asset management work are different and the way that you go into that data journey is more complicated on the private side,” he said.

This has been a long-term issue for the industry. Brown Brothers Harriman, the US financial services company, said in a 2024 paper that “Firms often attempt to boil the ocean in how they approach their data strategy” when it comes to a ‘data journey’ and the key should be to keep it small and simple to begin with.

“We are spending more time sourcing data on the private side than we are on the public. The asset class nuances come into play when you want to think about public versus private."

Gulati built on this and advised more nuanced approaches to tackle different parts of the business and doing it in smaller pieces than as one big project. “We manage both public and private assets and the way that we are looking at sustainable data across those markets are different and it does create a challenge,” Gulati said. “We are spending far more time sourcing data on the private side than we are on the public side. The asset class nuances come into play when you want to think about public versus private and then scaling.”

Pandurangan said that when it comes to the case of data – on the private side of the industry – “it is difficult as there is no guidance or consistency”.

“We are trying to build a framework but because it is privately held sometimes it is hard to ensure that it is accurate,” she said.

She added that it was also hard to integrate this data with external sources because when organisations bring that external data into the mix the formatting and integration is a challenge.

“But then building quality across the different sources and then scaling it to provide to portfolio managers is difficult,” she said. “This is because portfolio managers want it to be integrated with their portfolio management decision-making process.”

“The process of just getting the data sources is huge, this means that the timelines are getting impacted so we have to be mindful, and plan based on ensuring that these factors.”

She said that the overarching integration, as well as ensuring data quality and security, are the key points in this area.

Separately, security is becoming a bigger area to this part of the conversation and one that Pandurangan advises careful consideration of. “As we are integrating with a lot of new unstructured data sources, [security] is something we keep in mind,” she said. “The process of just getting the data sources is huge, this means that the timelines are getting impacted so we have to be mindful, and plan based on ensuring that these factors, which could be delayed.”

You can read more of Gulati and Pandurangan’s thoughts and the report in full, by clicking here. 

 

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