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“They need to work together so it
needs to be organised, but it can be
complicated to do,” explains Ruault.
“You have the people that know the
businesses and know the legacy sys-
tems working with these engineers
who can work on the use cases, and
we need them to all be agile and able
to work together. That includes the
business owner needing to explain
everything.”
38
Global Custodian
Spring 2018
There won’t be many heads of
business units in the industry who
are unwilling to embrace change on
a public stage, with conferences and
events full of veterans discussing the
importance of blockchain, artificial
intelligence and machine learning.
However, when it comes to letting
new blood into major decision-mak-
ing roles, there will undoubtedly be
tensions.
Keeping up morale
It’s not just banking institutions
having to adapt to these changes but
fund managers as well across the
world, known even more for being
stuck in their ways of doing things.
“You’ve got 40 to 50-year old port-
folio managers with 20-year old data
scientists,” says Larry Tabb, found-
er of research firm TABB Group.
“Those older guys may not even let a
junior analyst into the decision-mak-
ing process and now you’ve got a data
guy working on the strategy.”
Tabb believes a temporary separa-
tion from the business units might be
beneficial while the data scientists
become familiar with the procedures.
“The safest and easiest way to get
them into becoming effective is to
keep them in a separate area with a
separate goal,” he says. “Don’t try to
disperse them into day-to-day op-
erations as much, get them working
outside and building tools and servic-
es and then give support to all parts
of the company.
“Keep them on their own floor, in
their own area, in their own building.
At least until they understand how
it works, had successes and gained
respect. They need to learn how it all
works; and keep them independent.
Without autonomy and the ability to
seek success and solve problems and
fairly quick successes, it can be very
demoralising.”
Solving the mass shortage of data
scientists in the open market is not
an issue securities services firms
can do much about, but becoming
relevant and competitive enough to
capture this talent is.
In this current climate, service pro-
viders are inundated with data that
can be monetised if aggregated cor-
rectly. It will require custodians to
incorporate AI or predictive analysis
software into their systems to comb
through the data and turn it into in-
telligible materials for clients to use.
As such, custodians are likely to turn
into providers of big data analytics,
if of course, they can tap the most
sought after people in the world.