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
Alijah Poindexter
Research Analyst
Alijah Poindexter is an experienced professional in financial services research and consulting, with a background spanning banking, healthcare, asset management, and fintech. He joined Cutter Associates in 2025, where he supports the firm’s research initiatives with a focus on research production and design, analysis, and content development. Prior to Cutter, Alijah was a senior research associate at Datos Insights, producing market research on commercial banking, digital payments, and healthcare payments. He also led multiple client consulting engagements, delivering strategic, data-centric advisory work. Earlier in his career, he served as associate editor at Bank Automation News, where he focused on banking coverage and industry events, and held program and research analyst roles. Alijah earned his BBA from Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee.
To better support AI initiatives and facilitate platform modernization, investment management firms are transforming their data management strategies, shifting away from in-house, on-premises solutions toward cloud-based and managed data services.
Since 2023, cloud adoption has accelerated among firms and a marked percentage now consider data a strategic asset. But firms still face challenges such as lack of data governance, manual processes, and legacy technology. A majority of firms are modernizing their data management solutions to support business needs and AI initiatives, and 80% of those are selecting vended cloud deployment models. AI tools are widespread, but substantive enterprise adoption in business groups lags rollout in most firms.
