Generally people think that the role of a data scientist is just to examine the relationships between diverse sets of data as well as the disparate systems, processes and locations which store them. But the role is actually mature across certain sectors like retail. With the help of this, Amazon, for e.g., is able to analyze the behavior across multiple accounts, and knows exactly when and why to push a certain product to a customer. But the case is somewhat different in financial services where the role is not properly organized. Though Big Data analytics is used across the retail banking industry from fraud and sanctions management to improving account management processes, analysis of Big Data provides the potential for banks to create new income streams and the sector as a whole is benefitted when it comes to deriving value from vast quantities of information. Thus financial services, in spite of having people with good skills to do modeling and statistical analysis, need people who are able to spot key trends and focuses on looking for the relationships between data across disparate sources. Once these two skills are combined, the financial sector will start to see the rise of data scientists in it like other industries. Read more at:http://www.banktech.com/business-intelligence/piecing-together-the-data-scientist-puzz/240168604

Big Data was the talk of the town in 2013 and the trend is likely to continue in 2014 as well. Though Big Data has been used in the finance domain earlier, it has been limited.But this year it is expected to take a giant leap in terms of its applicability.

Using the power of social media and analyzing the vast amounts of data generated by them, financial companies can directly interact with their retail clients to provide them with an insight to the customers’ experience. Finance sector being data-centric, Cloud technology will help companies store large volumes of data which was otherwise not feasible given the cost and technological setup constraints. The sophisticated mobile technology will help in generating more data from the customers within an exceptionally short span of time. And finally, Analytics will do the most interesting part – forecasting and predicting results with the help of Predictive Modeling and beyond. Together, the Social, Cloud, Mobile and Analytics (SMAC) will close in and will redefine the financial sector operations.

Additionally, Big Data and Analytics will be used more and more in solving different financial cases and also studying investment practices with the help of Semantic Analytics.

 For more information,read http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/data-management/big-data-use-cases-across-financial-serv/240165075 to know on how Big Data is about to change the Financial world.

The international banking and financial sector had gone through a major turmoil in terms of mergers and acquisitions. Deregulation has been the main driver, through three major routes - breakage of interest rate controls, removal of barriers between banks and other financial institutions and lowering of entry barriers. The article by Srinivasan R., an associate professor in the Corporate Strategy and Policy Area at IIM Bangalore, speaks about the benefits and disadvantages of post 2000 mergers and acquisitions in India.

For more information, please go through: http://tejas.iimb.ac.in/articles/01.php