Data in finance and capital markets with Semarchy
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What
Semarchy is an Arizona-based cloud/SaaS data platform in the master data management market. The company’s Unified Data platform helps clients integrate, discover, master, and manage data sources. Founded in 2011, Semarchy is privately held, though it received strategic funding from Providence Strategic Growth in 2020.
Why
To Brett Hansen, Chief Growth Officer at Semarchy, the firm’s solutions can help financial services and capital markets players solve for the prerequisite, foundational data management practices that can then turn into automation, efficiency, and insights.
“The first thing you have to do before you start using data for decision making and AI is have trusted, accurate data,” Hansen said.
This is especially important in the financial realm, Hansen continued. Whereas the cost of mistakes is low in a field like e-commerce—you received the wrong product, and you get a new one after contacting customer service—the potential consequences are far higher in more regulated fields like finance and medicine. This forces players in those sectors to track how they collect, move, and store data, in addition to analysis and deployment—compelling them to seek out data management solutions with a history of working in high-compliance spaces.
What’s more, the relationship between financial leaders and data is changing. Where teams used to hire “data stewards” in charge of storing and deciphering data, executives—and individual contributors—face growing pressure to deal with data themselves.
How
Hansen perceives notable changes in how customers in financial services and capital markets treat data, and integrate those insights into their products and services. One customer, for example, sees Semarchy’s products as a way to reduce compliance-related overhead, deciding to put together a processor for understanding and tracking deals, which can then be reported back to compliance officers as a master record.
But Hansen said most FIs are driven to data in the interest of better servicing their customers, rather than improving compliance efforts. Especially at larger companies that have acquired or merged with other firms, data solutions can help integrate previously siloized customer information. “The more information I have, the [better] I can create a hierarchy to actually understand you as a customer… and be able to market to you,” Hansen said.
With financial and cap markets executives increasingly expected to use data in their daily operations, the demands for products have shifted. These leaders look for “cutting edge” data solutions that can address their current, acute needs; as well as no-code solutions that can be reconfigured down the road as new conditions emerge. These leaders place a heavy emphasis on UI/UX, encouraging solutions like Semarchy to follow established design practices like Google’s material design framework.
This also means that data-related products are far more targeted than they once were. “Customers are highly focused on a return on investment around a specific business requirement with a constrained timeframe,” Hansen explained. “Gone are the ‘I want to digitally transform my entire company grandiose projects that take two or three years.’” Clients look for quarter-length projects that can improve specific teams. Over time, this can become a path toward more holistic digitization, but the stated initial scope of work has measurably decreased.
Finally, these same leaders are responding to investor pressure to integrate artificial intelligence into their operations. They are looking for ways to import multiple domains of data in order to start unlocking information contained therein—which requires training their AI on good data. Master data management can help ensure the integrity of data as a “golden record” to ensure that AI is deployed responsibly and effectively.
