Presence in FIMA, London – A learning experience

Last year, by virtue of being part of ebusinessware, I got a chance to represent the company at FIMA conference held in London. FIMA is Europe’s premier financial information management conference. It is one of the leading financial events in Europe which provides interactive platform to network with market leaders. It was a great opportunity to benchmark our reference data management practice since 2001, against all market leaders. There were more than 350 participants from buyers as well from sellers side. 40+ speakers shared their views about reference data management practice.

It was good to listen to peers and to know where we stand in reference data management industry. However , it was thrilling to realize that our data management practice is up to date with latest strategies, technologies, operational efficiencies and in subject matter expertise. Our managed service offerings, enterprise database model, matching engine, workflow and processes to handle huge client data were remarkable. We also gained the interest of giant banking and financial companies on well formulated data verification rules (by country and by data type), exceptional handling, ETL processes, user interface, corporate actions modules, online matching, transliteration facility and broken url utility .

The Focus of the conference was to discuss the increasing importance of reference data management due to imposition of regulations and compliance and due to fundamental changes in the financial industry. With the birth of Basel-II, AML and KYC regulations, banking and financial industries were required to do cleaning, maintaining and integrating, the security and entity data. Purpose was to manage regulated compliances, risk management, consistency, operational efficiency, cost reduction and revenue generation. There were parties who were looking for these solutions and also those who were having these solutions ( like ebusinessware) and were looking for business and market trends in industry.

Data management experts from various locations gave their views on the need of managing data. Key topics and challenges for the industry were discussed. View points were given by the experts, for the experts and for those who wanted to become an expert. Different issues and related solutions were discussed. Data management experts, introduced their expertise and technologies which were in place for managing huge database. Being in the same business,  I was able to understand all the data management related issues which were discussed. I couldn’t help thinking that issues are no where different from the ones which we face while managing huge database. The good part was the confidence I could feel, after getting to know that all possible solutions are in place already in our organization. i thought of our experts who understand the culture, language, business networks and regulatory environments of countries and regions around the world. Our multidisciplinary research approach, technical expertise, web based application, well formulated QA procedures (which ensure format check, audit source check and data dictionary check), language expertise, made me feel that we are not lagging behind in the race, which lead to market’s best data managers/providers.

Few concerns and questions were raised on data security by audience to the speakers. With-in ebusinessware set-up, we use VPN systems, virus scanning, fully secure network server and physical access control for data security and these were the solutions from speaker side, as well.

Soon, I  realized that expertise to manage data is not a rocket science that can be bought from outside and can applied within the organization. It always comes through experience, devotion, aggressiveness, hard work and from self-learning which help you to broaden your horizon. Overall experience helped to learn, what  the requirements of the industry are and how can our expertise fit in there. We, being human beings, are life long learners. Apart from learning and gaining confidence, huge networking was created through FIMA conference. 18 hours of interaction across 3 days, on business requirements and in-depth industrial expertise helped to brainstorm our best practices in the world of Reference data management and it gave us  a stamp of approval.