Barclays is building a new team intended to tap unconventional data sources to bolster its research department, and it has hired a top data scientist from BuzzFeed to lead the charge.
The British bank announced Thursday that it had hired Adam Kelleher as director and chief data scientist for research, a new role at the bank focused on “sourcing, normalizing, and utilizing alternative data sets to support Barclays’ Research franchise.”
Kelleher, previously a principal data scientist and machine-learning expert at BuzzFeed, will build and lead a global team of data scientists capitalizing on the burgeoning field of alternative data— raw or unstructured sources of information like satellite imagery or weather patterns not found in traditional financial filings or investor presentations.
“Adam has an exceptional track record in applying data science to drive commercially valuable outcomes,” said Jeff Meli, a cohead of research at Barclays. “Hiring innovative data scientists agnostic of industry, and acquiring powerful new alternative data sources, demonstrates Barclays’ continued investment in growing our Research offering.”
At BuzzFeed, Kelleher used algorithms and data analysis to help make the company’s content go viral. He also worked on content recommendation, ad targeting and research, and video metadata extraction, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He’s also an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute.
A cottage industry focused on nontraditional data has sprung up amid an explosion in obtainable data over the past decade, taking in everything from mobile-phone data to job postings to traffic data.
Hedge funds were the early adopters in mining alternative data sets to inform their trades and investment theses, with traditional long-only fund managers soon following.
According to a report from the consultancy Opimas, asset managers are spending more than $5 billion each year on alternative data, with that figure expected to grow by almost 30% annually.
A recent State Street study found that 30% of institutional investors say the incorporation of new information or alternative data will be one of their strongest opportunities to increase assets over the next five years.
And many asset managers have set up data units staffed with coders and data scientists. Investments banks have responded by developing their own alternative-data efforts. Goldman Sachs is exploring alternative sources of data within its securities division to see whether that can be sold, Risk Magazine reported this month, for example.
“There is money to be made in alternative data in 2018 not only by investors, but also by data providers, visualization and analytics-focused firms, and those helping to get the data to those who need it,” Kevin McPartland, the head of market structure and technology research at Greenwich Associates, said earlier this year.
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