Business of Data Meets: Credit Suisse Global CDAO Dr Adrian Pearce

To celebrate being named one of the world’s most influential data leaders, Credit Suisse Global CDAO Dr Adrian Pearce talks about his 2020 plans, today’s cyber security landscape and why data quality is still a top priority for Credit Suisse

What were your greatest professional achievements of 2019?

Negotiating the demands of our regulators while deploying a comprehensive data management framework and working with business divisions to create value and opportunity from internal and external data.

How will you build on those achievements over the next 12 months?

This year, we are leveraging core tools and processes to provide multiple solutions to specific opportunities with limited incremental cost and effort. It is about the careful deployment of proven capabilities to an increasingly broad user base.

What are the key challenges your sector’s data and analytics leaders will face this year?

One challenge is ensuring the ethical use of data to balance the needs of shareholders and clients. It is a broad subject, but a series of clearly defined and enforced principles will provide the solid foundation needed.

There has been a lot of talk about how data analytics and AI can transform the industry, but this is dependent on reliable, high quality data. The more AI is explored, the more this will become apparent. The focus will then turn to fixing the foundations of data to improve its quality.

Having strong data governance and having the ability to hold identifiable data owners accountable for quality and helping them fix data issues that they may not even be aware of remains highly important.

How do you think the cyber security space will evolve over the course of the year?

The amount of data we create, use and store is increasing. The number of actors outside our perimeter will increase. The level of control around our environment will need to adjust accordingly.

Cyber security is by its nature is a constantly evolving landscape. Potential hackers are continually refining and changing their approach to compromise our security by increasingly complex and elaborate methods.

Cyber security is about staying ahead of this, having clear sight of the control landscape and keeping a close eye on both internal and, importantly, external events, learning from these and being able to swiftly respond to new developments in the threat landscape.

What new ways do you think financial services organizations will be using data, analytics and AI by the end of 2020?

Each day it is possible to hear about new and interesting use cases about how data can be leveraged, and AI utilised to improve customer experience or enhance efficiency.

This year will see further incremental developments in this area with a greater focus on being able use data to ‘join the dots’, whether it is across processes, clients or products, both internally and externally.

Those who can get the right data in the hands of the right people at the right time will realize significant value.