Over 40% of executives from buy-side firms across the US are not confident that the data they are receiving from disparate systems such as order management systems, accounting, performance and risk systems is consistent and of high quality, according to a new survey by SimCorp.

In addition, 67.4% of respondents believe that there is significant effort involved in reconciling data between disparate systems and sources. Approximately 22% of respondents indicated that it would take days to generate a report calculating their firm's exposure/performance across all holdings, including derivatives (vs. minutes or hours). Nearly eight percent responded that this would take weeks.

"The statistics are distressing," says Matt Samelson (pictured), Principal at Woodbine Associates, the Stamford CT-based consulting firm. "According to these numbers, 40% of those surveyed are making investment decisions based on poor quality data and nearly 30% do not have a near-real time view into their exposure, making it impossible for these firms to be agile and respond to shifting market dynamics. We as a community need to galvanize change in order to restore investor confidence."

"Improving data quality does not have to be rooted in a long and expensive enterprise data management undertaking," says David Kubersky, Managing Director of SimCorp North America. "Investment managers that have adopted core multi-asset class investment accounting systems have a distinct advantage with data quality, as position data is already consolidated in a single repository across all instrument classes."