Wall Street�s Search for Transparency and Analytics

Capital markets firms continue to be hampered by less than optimum data transparency. Data continues to exist in departmental silos and within proprietary systems. While not the cause of the Wall Street meltdown, the lack of enterprise-wide, transparent data certainly impacted capital markets firms� ability to react quickly and decisively. But even if enterprise-wide data was available, most firms do not have the breadth and depth of analytical capabilities to turn that data into information. For example, many capital markets firms do not have a good handle on the risks involved in counter party transactions because they lack the transparency into the markets that the counter parties do business in. What�s required is a corporate data standard that is board-driven and board-approved as well as a strategy for developing an infrastructure that stores data once and then shares that data with the rest of the enterprise, says Paul Devlin, Director of Capital Markets, SAS.