Laura Jesson
Director, Research
Laura Jesson has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry as a project manager, business analyst, and consultant. She joined Cutter Associates in 2013. Prior to Cutter, Laura spent eight years at Wells Capital Management and Evergreen Investments, where she managed investment operations projects, including those focused on outsourcing, client reporting, and trade management. She previously worked at Omgeo as a member of the Central Trade Manager (CTM) product design team. Laura started her career at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) as a process consultant supporting a variety of projects for clients in the financial services industry. Laura earned her bachelor of arts in economics and psychology from Amherst College. She holds the Project Manager Professional (PMP) certification.
Recent research assignments and publications include the following:
- AI Use Cases in Investment Management: Infinite Possibilities
- Business Intelligence Tools
- Cutter Benchmarking: Client Reporting
- Cutter Benchmarking: Firmwide ESG Capabilities
- Cutter Benchmarking: Managing Vendors and Service Providers
- DataOps: In Theory and Practice
- Enabling Data Analytics
- ESG Data Management
- ESG: It’s a Jungle Out There ─ A Look at the Data Provider Landscape
- ESG Investing: One Vision, Many Lenses
- Execution Management Systems
- Hybrid Work Arrangements and Their Impact on Firm Culture
- Using RPA to Automate Business Processes
- The Role of the CRM for Asset Managers
Kathy McDermott
Managing Director, Research
Kathy McDermott has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry. Kathy, who joined Cutter Associates in 2011, has authored multiple Cutter Research reports on a wide range of topics. She spent ten years as a consultant for a variety of asset management firms, with a focus on business analysis for front- and middle-office projects. Kathy was previously the senior business analyst, equity trading systems, at Wellington Management, specializing in the firm’s proprietary electronic and basket trading applications. Earlier in her career, Kathy worked for Thomson Financial Services (now Thomson Reuters), supporting FirstCall and PORTIA clients in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand, and later went on to manage PORTIA implementations. She also worked at LongView (now Linedata) as an account manager and then product manager of electronic trading. Kathy earned her bachelor of arts in mathematics from Hamilton College.
Recent research assignments and publications include the following:
- Alternative Data and the Expanding Universe of Investment Information
- Cutter Benchmarking: Data Management
- Cutter Benchmarking: Market Data Administration
- DataOps: In Theory and Practice
- Enabling Data Analytics
- The Evolving Front Office Support Model
- Evolving Data Governance: Building a Data Culture
- Making Snowflake Part of Your Modern Data Platform
- Managed Data Services
- Market Data Administration
- Order Management Systems
- Outsourced Trading: Has the Time Come?
- Reference Data Management Solutions
Across investment management firms, many use cases exist for analytics. Firms enable access to quality data, strive to provide analytics for insights that generate alpha, and structure programs supporting data and analytics.
Firms today are looking for the best ways to support their data analytics initiatives ─ whether for the benefit of investment decision-making, trade execution, sales/distribution, or other use cases where analytics may offer an edge. This research identifies the key elements of the organizational structure, data architecture, and systems/tools that support data science and analytics. It also provides a look at member firms' practices and current challenges for enabling data analytics.