John Legrand, managing director – Europe, Middle East & Asia Pacific, for Eagle Investment Systems, a subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon
SINGAPORE, 15 MAY 2009 -- The absence of a cohesive data management strategy is the reason why so many financial services firms are still struggling to understand the precise impact of the current financial crisis on their enterprises.
The lack of an effective data management strategy has translated into a lack of true transparency and insight into their businesses, leading to a failure to understand the risks to which they are exposed.
These are some of the thoughts of John Legrand, managing director – Europe, Middle East & Asia Pacific, for Eagle Investment Systems, a subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon.
Eagle Investment Systems provides leading-edge data management, investment accounting and performance measurement solutions and professional services to support the global financial services industry.
Too much faith
The Eagle Investment Systems MD said Asia Pacific enterprises, in particular, place too much faith in the ability of risk management systems.
“As many firms have learnt, technology systems are only as good as the underlying data,” Legrand said. “Yet there is a tendency for firms to think that just by implementing a risk or performance system, they are gaining control and visibility. This is not the case if they fail to have control over the data that feeds these systems.”
Legrand said that by not implementing a clear data management strategy, chief investment officers and heads of IT could be putting their companies’ competitive advantage at risk, because they lacked a clear understanding of their full exposure and true investment performance.
“Companies and CEOs need to constantly pinpoint, with speed and exact accuracy, their exposure to bad debts and toxic investments, as well as interest rates, and they require the right data management systems in place to do this in real time any time of day,” he said.
“The ongoing financial storm might ultimately prove beneficial and be the catalyst which trippers the implementation of long-overdue reforms in risk and data management systems.”
