Data is beautiful

Release date: 18 May 2022

Data is everywhere. Man and beast have harvested it since time immemorial and in various ways to gain an advantage. And the use cases are as manifold and diverse as the world around us. Even bees convey spatial information by performing a special waggle dance to inform their fellows about rich food sources. 
Meanwhile, us humans are taking it to the extreme in almost all areas of life: with the help of data, we navigate, build and examine. Thus, data are our greatest source of knowledge. To tap its power, we turn it into information that can be understood and used to build bridges – literally and metaphorically.


Some of our experts who are working with data in their daily business gave some further details from different perspectives.

How does ISS leverage data to create and share value?

Joel Yarm

“With more than 35 years of experience in serving investment professionals, ISS provides differentiated governance and ESG data to support our clients’ investment decision-making processes and Responsible Investment and Stewardship practices. Institutional investors can leverage our unique data to aid in portfolio construction, compliance screening, regulatory and client reporting, and as an input into proprietary ESG frameworks.” – Joel Yarm, Managing Director & Head of EMEA ESG Sales at Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS)



How does the Market Data + Services team experience the “beauty of data” in their daily work?

Alireza Dorfard

“Data can provide guidance and act as signposts in our increasingly complex and connected world. In the Trading & Clearing division, we seek to tap into new data opportunities – and we do so by continuously expanding our cooperation network of internal and external partners. This allows us to add innovative products to our portfolio every year – always tailored specifically to our clients’ needs. Our data and data analytics offering means that our clients can rely on transparent and high-quality information to make investment and trading decisions, manage risks, safeguard assets and meet increasing regulatory requirements. Consequently, data is our contribution to create trust in a functioning and future-proof market.” – Alireza Dorfard, Head of Market Data + Services


What can you tell us about the pace of data technology evolution?

Anton Nickel

“In the summer of 2021, we were developing an experimental infrastructure with Google to connect critical data from multiple sources to train a machine learning algorithm without a developer ever seeing that data. In the fall of 2021, this was still Cutting Edge Research. By January 2022, this was part of the standard solutions at Google and Microsoft. The world of artificial intelligence is evolving at a rapid pace, and you have to constantly evolve with it to avoid being left behind by the technology.” – Anton Nickel, Lead Data Scientist from Big Data & Automation



How does data help Deutsche Börse to improve its sustainability performance?

Vanessa Pütz

“Data and ESG: for us in Group ESG Strategy, ESG data is fundamentally important in relation to our annual ESG ratings and reportings. Therefore, we collect data from all major business units which then helps us to measure our ESG performance, steer our ESG management and consequently to strategically transform our own business into a future-proof one. Did you know that one of the biggest amounts of data is being used to calculate our CO2 emissions? For this reason, we have recently implemented a cloud-based software tool for the collection and calculation of our environmental data for every Deutsche Börse location.” – Vanessa Pütz from Group ESG Strategy


How is data integrated into Qontigo's value proposition?

Axel Lomholt

“Key to our value proposition as an index provider is our open architecture approach. We are able to select and integrate best-in-class third-party data from leading providers as well as proprietary client data into our index methodologies to achieve the highly targeted strategies and exposures desired by our clients. We have a wide range of ESG, climate and sustainability indices which all incorporate this approach – with a strong pipeline of new solutions in the works.” – Axel Lomholt, Chief Product Officer, Index, at Qontigo