Investment companies have little confidence in the quality of their data

SimCorp, a leading provider of software and services for the financial industry, today released the results of a survey on data management conducted in December 2011 with a hundred leaders of 50 investment companies in North America .

The survey revealed that over 40% of respondents questioned the consistency and quality of their data from various systems, including those used for orders management, accounting, performance monitoring and risk management.

67,4 % of managers surveyed believe that it takes hard work to consolidate data from multiple systems and sources of information for their business. They are also nearly 22% to indicate that it takes them days (not hours or minutes) to produce a report calculating the exposure or performance of the company on its entire portfolio, including derivatives. Nearly 8% reported that it even takes weeks.

"These results are shocking," says Matt Samelson, director of consulting firm Woodbine Associates, based in Stamford, Connecticut. "Based on these figures, in 40% of respondents, managers make investment decisions based on data of poor quality and nearly 30% of these companies have no vision of their exposure in real time. They are therefore lacking agility and cannot adapt to market dynamics. This is why it is our responsibility as a community, to mobilize ourselves and galvanize change in order to restore investor confidence."

"To improve data quality, it is not necessary to go through a lengthy and costly process of managing corporate data," says David Kubersky, Managing Director of SimCorp in North America. "The investment management companies that have adopted accounting systems covering the basis of multiple asset classes have an advantage of choice in this area because data on their positions are already consolidated into a single repository, common to all asset classes. "