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
Matt Mueller
Research Analyst
Matt Mueller brings more than eight years of experience in the financial services industry to his Research Analyst role at Cutter Associates. Prior to joining Cutter in 2022, Matt was an investment performance associate at Cambridge Associates before moving onto an investment operations role at 1919 Investment Counsel, an RIA headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. At 1919 Matt was involved in every aspect of the back office, from trade support to Security Master to compliance. Most recently, Matt served as a research analyst at the financial publication Angels & Entrepreneurs, which specializes in early-stage companies raising money via Equity Crowdfunding Platforms. Matt was responsible for sourcing the deals, and evaluating the product, market, and investment viability of each company. Matt earned his bachelor’s degree in economics with a minor in business from Gettysburg College.
Investment management firms have been implementing and expanding data governance for years. In this research, we explore data governance through the lens of building a data culture that will help ensure adoption across the organization.
Successful data governance requires an enterprise-wide collaborative culture where all members of the organization play a role in enabling quality, timely, and accessible data that is valued as a strategic asset. A good data culture can alleviate many challenges that firms face, such as a lack of understanding of data governance goals, lack of transparency, and resistance to taking on data governance roles. Building a data culture and community is crucial to a firm-wide understanding of data governance and the willing acceptance of participating in it.