Business processes are becoming increasingly structured at buy and sell-side financial institutions as a result of advances in text mining technology and emerging XML standards, according to a new report from IT consultancy The Intertek Group.
The report, "Leveraging Unstructured Data in Investment Management," suggests that advances in text mining technology and emerging XML standards in finance are revolutionising the ability to extract value from unstructured and semi-structured data.
Research shows that basic text mining functionality is now mature, with advanced functionality such as summarisation and visualisation adding powerful analytical capability.
The study also shows good progress being made towards defining XML standards in finance. These standards will stipulate how the entire universe of financial information - from time series to analyst and corporate reports and news - will be described. According to the report, this will take us from free text search to the ability to perform powerful queries on semi-structured data.
Sergio Focardi, co-author of the report, says: "In today's difficult business environment, with the number of analysts on the investment side dropping and the number of firms being researched likewise dropping, these developments hold the promise of allowing market participants to use more sources of information efficiently."
Focardi also suggests financial firms will combine text and data mining in applications such as fundamental research, event analysis, compliance and CRM.