Building Foundations for Mobile Data

Mobile information via smartphone or tablet computer is ubiquitous, and certainly widespread in the financial industry now as well. Reference data applications, however, are just beginning to catch on, due to the need for middle- and back-office support to power such applications.
“People are still discovering the best way to get at reference data,” says Rick McCarthy, managing director, Americas, at DST Global Solutions, which is preparing a native application for mobile devices to handle reference data for release in the first quarter of 2013. “Mobile applications are one of the pieces we’re looking at.”

DST does offer browser-based applications for reference data on mobile devices, but native applications will be a new, more intuitive and interactive offering for reference data on mobile devices. “Mobile applications are better served with near-time data,” says McCarthy, adding that financial advisers and wealth managers are prime users of such applications. “Big data is the reason near-time smart data makes sense for mobile applications.”

Mobile Capacity
The first challenge for accessing reference data feeds is doing so without pulling in complete or comprehensive files, as Steve Engdahl, head of product strategy at enterprise data software vendor GoldenSource, observes. “A full file extract may not make sense in the context of walking around with an iPad,” he says. “If I want to understand or be alerted to why my feeds were late at the moment, or have a particular question I want to ask, like what’s my exposure to Greece, then it can be accessible right in the iPad.”

Such a question could be addressed remotely to a full data set that a provider like GoldenSource would have on its servers, Engdahl explains. “I can get some quick access, slice and dice it, and ultimately drill through,” he says. “As I gain a better understanding, looking at the visualizations, I can then drill through to a particular problem area and ask someone to look at something or take some action myself.”

Since GoldenSource sees interest in such mobile device capabilities, it’s planning to offer that powered by its current products, according to Engdahl. “There is an expectation of wanting to ask the question and get an answer in a reasonable amount of time while they’re standing there right here, right now – not the end of the day or an hour from now,” he says. “They want self-service through whatever devices they happen to use, whether desktop or iPad.”

Imminent Tipping Point
The drawback to tablet and mobile applications is that they offer a “very thin layer of quality,” says DST’s McCarthy. “But we know tablets will blow past some of the laptops in the next five years.” DST plans to base its upcoming mobile reference data application on its Anova platform, which includes a data aggregation mechanism, middle-office analytics and front-end distribution and reporting.

The ability to provide more reporting and analytics on mobile devices will depend on getting more middle- and back-office investments, according to Sean O’Dowd, capital markets program director at data management technology provider Teradata. There is potential for specific-purpose data applications for mobile devices, he says, pointing specifically to data management for data architects or database administrators, as well as reference data management solutions.

Mobile data applications are already prevalent from front offices, but services for the middle and back offices “haven’t come to fruition yet,” says O’Dowd. “When standards and priorities have finally gotten to the point where companies are being dragged or are moving themselves to comply, or put in place the operational improvements, then those additional knock-on benefits from a mobile solution can begin to make sense.”

Although availability of mobile reference data applications is behind that of other data applications, that is nearing a tipping point, and will soon catch on fast, McCarthy predicts. “A lot of large institutions are building their own indices based on the reference data they currently hold, so I think [mobile reference data applications] will appear sooner rather than later,” he says.