data-url="http://www.xignite.com/market-data/simplifying-market-data-management-how-wealth-managers-can-better-handle-the-market-data-explosion/"

data-via="xignite" data-text="Simplifying Market Data Management

- How Wealth Managers Can Better Handle the Market Data

Explosion"

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alt="" width="200" height="200" />Market data is an integral

component to critical wealth management systems across the

front-, middle- and back-offices. From investment research to

portfolio reporting, compliance and risk management to online

customer portals, market data drives decision-making and provides

enhanced transparency.

Managing market data

across all of these disparate systems has always been a

challenge, but has become increasingly complex in recent years

due to the explosive increase in the volume of market data. The

daily flood of market data shows no sign of slowing down-in fact,

experts project it to accelerate in the coming years. This means

that market data management solutions must easily scale to meet

the needs of tomorrow.

At the same time, data

management has taken on an elevated priority for wealth

management firms, moving from what was once primarily an IT issue

to a priority vital to the entire enterprise. Among the forces

that are driving strategic investment in data management are the

growing number of applications that require market data, the need

for scalability and improved operational efficiency, increasing

regulatory requirements, and potential cost

savings.

Market data management

today

So how do wealth

management firms currently manage market data? The answer varies

from firm to firm, but for those that bring external market data

in house via traditional data feeds or flat files, there's a

common theme of complexity. Ingesting market data from datafeeds

and populating the wide variety of end user applications requires

a data management infrastructure, along with dedicated databases,

software, and maintenance.

For larger firms

that have built these capabilities organically over time, there

is often overlap, with different stakeholders building siloed

market data management systems to feed their own applications.

The resulting patchwork of systems is an inefficient and

expensive boondoggle. Data is presented inconsistently across the

enterprise, and no one understands what data is being used or

who's using it.

How the cloud

can streamline market data management

On a basic level, a cloud-based solution simplifies

market data management systems by hosting market data offsite and

making it available on demand within any number of internal

applications. But there's more to it than that. With a

cloud-based market data solution, firms bypass all of the

infrastructure headaches and expenses associated with traditional

datafeeds. The complexities of integrating traditional datafeeds

-flat file processing, data cleansing and parsing, network

infrastructure, and ongoing system maintenance-disappear with

cloud APIs that deliver market data directly to end-user

applications. This reduces the burden on in-house market data

management systems and enables firms to reallocate resources to

extracting value from the data.

In addition, a

cloud-based market data solution provides superior tracking of

data usage, enabling transparency into what data is being used

and by whom. This allows wealth managers to better optimize their

market data management systems and ensure that they're not

overspending on getting the right data to the right

applications.

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This is the second post in our " href="http://xignite.com/market-data/top-5-wealth-management-technology-challenges-addressed-by-the-cloud/">Top

5 Wealth Management Technology Challenges Addressed by the

Cloud" multi-part blog series. Be on the lookout for

our next post "Developing new strategies to satisfy more

sophisticated customers".