Data is the oil... residential real estate edition

"In recent years, as finance has computerised and algorithms have come to dominate markets, data has evolved from being a byproduct of transactions to 'the lifeblood of finance'" (quote by Audrey Costabile Blater PhD of Aite Group)

Buried in nearly every piece on this matter is mention of the Ellie Mae purchase by Intercontinental Exchange which may seem a bit dissonant, but residential mortgages provide some of the richest and most sizable, long duration data sets around, one that's barely being leveraged when compared to adjacent financial sectors, and generally at a remove. This may be attributable to the cloistered nature of the US mortgage market, a $10Tr+ cul-de-sac in the financial markets.

But, don't fret. The Black Fleet of exogenous disruption is at the mouth of this sector's Edo Bay.

HBR: Are Your Company’s Leaders and Data Scientists on the Same Page?

“Unfortunately, what’s far more common is misalignment between expectations at the top of the organization and the foundation of what data science can realistically deliver. The best mental picture of this dynamic is an inverted pyramid. The wide top reflects the C-suite’s oversized expectations for data science impact. The small point at the bottom represents the data science team’s current capabilities, which are often far more modest and develop over time.” (from HBR)

Trust but verify - Coronavirus edition

The latest epidemic coming out of China has many highlighting the deadly inefficiencies of top-down authoritarian regimes.  As Nicholas Kristof puts it in his recent piece, "Dictators often make poor decisions because they don’t get accurate information."

Into this breach of trust... "BlueDot Inc a Toronto startup whose AI-driven health monitoring platform analyzes billions of data points... alerted its clients to the (coronavirus) outbreak on Dec. 31, well ahead of notifications from the World Health Organization and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention"