June ISITC Industry Forum Recap

Citisoft attended the quarterly ISITC conference in San Diego last week; it was our second industry forum this year and our first as ISITC members with Citisoft's Danielle Castrechini co-chairing the Marketing Committee. As with the Boston conference in March, the speakers were engaging and the topics of discussion clearly resonated as shared challenges among the attendees.

Sunday afternoon kicked off with the custodian & investment management and middle office sessions. Each of these were well attended with the first focusing on insight from panel speakers on the challenges and collaboration across IMs and Custodians, with the implementation of GC Direct to exchange SSIs in an automated fashion. One of the primary challenges centered around the size and scale of data clean-up efforts required prior to implementation and panel speakers offered different approaches and considerations based upon their own lessons learned. The middle office session was designed as a roundtable attended by custodians, IMs, broker dealers and vendors offering their varied opinions on the future of the middle office.

Monday's general session opened with chair, Jeff Zoller, providing a summary of ISITCs strategic plan for the next five years with focus on technology, data and regulation as the primary drivers and challenges facing the industry today. It was refreshing to see the organization recognize and make plans to adapt to the fast pace of the industry with a top-down approach. Their approach will not only continue to set market practice, but to also help provide potential solutions to the challenges firms are facing.

Following the general session, Citisoft Director, Derek Pratt, presented "Fueling the Ship: Data Management in Focus" with emphasis on the importance of a well-organized data infrastructure to support, manage, and deliver data across the investment management lifecycle. Building on this topic, Derek attended a later session with the reference data and standards group to provide additional insight into setting up data governance and how to get people engaged to take on the data steward role.

Michael Gardner, Managing Director & Head of Center, BNY Mellon Silicon Valley Innovation Center Client Technology Solutions, also took the floor to discuss the trend of software disruption. He provided an overview of how BNY Mellon is moving to position themselves as a "digital enterprise" with the implementation of a suite of products that will introduce operational efficiencies as well as maximize data and information availability to its clients and partners. The concept of technology "learning" through data analysis is a bit scary for some, but certainly makes sense given the focus on new technologies.

As expected, there was a theme of data challenges throughout the conference and it was clear that firms are experiencing similar challenges in the data management space overall. The consistent message from those experiencing the pain through various initiatives was to take the time to assess, define their approach, and plan accordingly, even if it may take longer than expected. With an increased focus on STP, cybersecurity, third party risk, regulatory issues, etc., we believe data quality and data governance will continue to be at the forefront of the industry dialogue.

To find out more about ISITC's upcoming events, visit their website events listing page.