Matt Smith, CEO Steel Eye for The Fintech Times
Every modern business in today’s tech-driven world is inundated with data, yet until recently, this data was ‘owned’ and only made accessible to IT departments and data analysts who used it to drive business decisions. We are, however, seeing a new wave of data democratisation, where businesses can own and access their own data with fewer limitations, silos or gatekeepers and greater freedom to present data in a way that people can understand.
Tis shift to information democratisation stems from the large quantities of data created on a daily basis, also known as big data, and the rise
of fintech and other tech advances, including improved data visualisation tools and accessible cloud so ware, which have enabled non-tech people to make sense of this data and gain wider business insights. e impact of democratisation now extends as well into the financial services industry through the second Markets in Financial instruments Directive (MiFID II), which came into effect on 3 January 2018, and was designed with the goal of democratising access financial market data by forcing the manufacturers and distributors off financial products to unbundle information and reveal more to the consumers of their products.
Though met with challenges, open, democratised data has the potential to change the way businesses use the data they generate, providing valuable business insights, improving access and encouraging collaboration. Below, Matt Smith, CEO of SteelEye, the regulatory technology
and data analytics rm, explains how open and democratised data can improve the way business users access data and some of the barriers it has faced along the way.
