It's the Data, Stupid

One of my former collegues once started a panel discussion on buy side technology by saying "Technology means nothing unless it has a business use."

He had a very valid point. The trendiest, up to the minute technology is all fine and dandy, but if you can't trade, invest, process with it--who cares?

The same can be said for data. There is a growing vocal community (especialy around risk management) that is offering up the radical notion that risk models work better with ('shock horror') real-world, clean data.

In the panel Payments and Risk Management at this week's EBADay in Vienna, James Dickson Leach, Operational Risk Consultant, HSBC Strategic Risk Consulting said that the number one advantage of payments was the data it offered risk managers. "You can use REAL data for your models," he said. 

What is risk management without REAL data that relates to actual up-to-the-minute transactions? I'll tell you: a bunch of trendy equations. And who cares about trendy equations? As we have seen over the past 18 months, not many.