While advanced technologies geared towards getting a competitive edge through data have been available for some time, but mainly to larger financial services firms who can afford the investment, the trend of who is adopting these is changing.
In particular, the advent of cloud technology and the originally slow but now steady adoption of this across financial services firms has lowered the costs considerably, meaning that a wider group of businesses, particularly investment firms, can now use this technology for a range of business processes, such a data management, disaster recovery and investment decision making. The insights it brings to portfolio managers is remarkable.