Data-backed decision making has never been more essential for investors. Regardless of location, the world’s best investors demand the ability to digest as much information as possible across countries, exchanges, and securities. This is especially true in Asia, where market structure is fragmented, and finding a true golden source of information at a reasonable cost has historically been cost prohibitive for smaller buy-side firms.
At the same time, volatility in Asia, including risks associated with China, has driven many investors to zoom out and view wider Asia as a wholistic investment opportunity. The big picture is crystalized by sharp, accurate data.
Data presents a unique challenge for Asia based investment firms
While data-backed thinking has so many benefits that it is an obvious tool for the world’s best investors, it is often thought of as too costly and cumbersome for the small to mid-sized investment firms based in Asia. The overwhelming sentiment from these investors is that they need to do more with less. Given this dynamic, the idea of incorporating data into their investment processes has historically been daunting.
There are many reasons for this. Maintaining exchange agreements and working with data vendors directly carries a large administrative burden. In some cases, especially at smaller hedge funds with only a few talented investment focused employees, data management takes time away from portfolio managers for time-sensitive administrative work.
What’s more, contracting directly with a large data vendor as a small hedge fund can be a losing proposition. Not only do large vendors provide lower quality support to small clients, but after investing in the data from a large provider, the management of the data is left without clear ownership and requires coverage at an operational level as well as executive level support. This drains time and resource and reduces overall efficiency.
There is also an implicit cost that comes with data management, including maintaining contracts with the vendors and exchanges, fulfilling reporting requirements about data usage, running automated processes on weekends, and much more. Apart from the cost and time, these tasks create opportunity for error.
All these issues make the idea of incorporating data into investing extremely daunting.
Enter TS One
TS Imagine offers high-quality, low-cost data management through TS One. TS One’s fully packaged, front to back solution provides one source of data integrated seamlessly across all modules – trading, risk management, compliance, reporting, and accounting.
The derived data within TS One is massive, includes fully fleshed out terms and conditions for over 20 million listed securities, and the ability to support many OTC Models and the creation of vital derived curves. It is supported by a dedicated data and support team who work around the clock in all time zones ensuring the data is normalized and fit for purpose, and assuming the burden of contracting with vendors and maintaining exchange agreements.
All of this is especially helpful for smaller firms with employees already taking on various tasks in addition to their investing remit.
Corporate action use case
Corporate actions are nuanced across exchanges and countries, and Asia-based investors seeking to capitalize on corporate actions need to see across time zones and geographies. TS Imagine’s data management team and systems process more than150,000 unique mandatory corporate actions each year across multiple asset classes.
This includes maintaining all the historical curves and marking all the prices. This is one example of how a small to mid-sized hedge fund using TS One benefits from the very same processes used by the largest, most sophisticated investors. This is especially helpful for smaller firms with employees already taking on various tasks in addition to their investing remit.
Benefits beyond investing
Sound data management carries many additional operational benefits. The rate of employee turnover in Asia is higher than in other regions, and each time an employee leaves, their institutional knowledge goes with them. Having people leave and join who then need to learn a full bespoke workflow creates a huge distraction and, in some cases, operational risk.
Conclusion
With TS One, users do not have to think about how to source, map or maintain data, they can just access what is there. Users can trust that for their full investment workflow they have a front to back solution allowing data to flow seamlessly through every module.
Once clients join the TS Imagine platform, they are benefiting from data which is run through rigorous automated checked and validation, as well as data that their peers are using at the same time to make key investment decisions.
Data Literacy: The Essential Skill for the 21st Century Workplace
