Unfortunately, when talking about investing, you also have the potential of losing a decent amount of money. Some have even had to file bankruptcy to cover the cost of their losses. That is why it is so important to know what you are getting into, and that you are prepared and educated.

Finances

The first, and most important, step is to sit down and go through your finances. You need to have a few things in order before moving forward with your investing plans. First of all, if you have any debt, you should pay it off first. That means any back debt, such as student loans or bank loans. No need to include monthly expenses because that will be in your budget, which is next. If everything is budgeted in, and you have some money left over, you need to consider one more thing. It is suggested that you have a savings account big enough to cover 3 to 6 months of expenses, “just in case.” If everything is in order, and everything is covered, feel free to go to the next step.

Approach

You will need to decide how you are planning to invest. You need to analyse yourself and truthfully answer a few questions. Are you educated enough to make your own investments? Do you have the time to monitor your investments and keep them positive? Do you enjoy crunching numbers? Do you like completing research every day? Now you need to decide if you are going to do everything by yourself, if you plan to hire someone, or if you plan to use an online platform that will do most of the work for you.

Education

No matter what direction you plan to take, you need to understand the lingo. That means that you need to look over a glossary of terms and keep it saved. There are basic terms that everyone in the business will use, so you need to be able to understand them if you want to be able to make an informed decision.

Decision

You need to decide how risky you want to be. You must remember that the higher the risk that you take, the more money you can make. But it means that you have a higher chance of losing some big money. It all comes down to you, so you need to decide how you want to approach it. The best thing that you can do would be to take a medium risk stance. You will not profit as much, but if you do end up losing it will not be the end of your world.

Scams

Be careful of who you choose to deal with, and to whom you give your investment money or information to. As with anything else that deals with finances, people will target others that are unaware of how they do things. “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” That is an old saying, but one that is full of truth.

Final Thoughts

The best thing that you can do before investing, and after you have some money in the pot, is research. If in doubt do not invest in it. If you are using an online platform or going through a professional investment financer, you will still want to keep track of your interests. You truly never know what can happen, so stay educated and make informed decisions.

Unfortunately, by prioritising ad-hoc incident resolution, organisations struggle to identify and address recurring data quality problems in a structural manner. So what is the correct approach? Boyke Baboelal, Strategic Solutions Director of Americas at Asset Control, answers the question for Finance Monthly.

To rectify the above issue, organisations must carry out more continuous analysis, targeted at understanding their data quality and reporting on it over time. Not many are doing this and that’s a problem. After all, if firms fail to track what was done historically, they will not know how often specific data items contained completeness or accuracy issues, nor how often mistakes are made, or how frequently quick bulk validations replace more thorough analysis.

To address this, organisations need to put in place a data quality framework. Indeed, the latest regulations and guidelines increasingly require them to establish and implement this.

That means identifying what the critical data elements are, what the risks and likely errors or gaps in that data are, and what data flows and controls are in place. By using such a framework, organisations can outline a policy that establishes a clear definition of data quality and its objectives and that documents the data governance approach, including processes and procedures; responsibilities and data ownership.

The framework will also help organisations establish the dimensions of data quality: that data should be accurate, complete, timely and appropriate, for instance. For all these areas, key performance indicators (KPIs) need to be implemented to enable the organisation to measure what data quality means, while risk indicators (KRIs) need to be implemented and monitored to ensure the organisation knows where its risks are and that it has effective controls to deal with them.

A data quality framework will inevitably be focused on the operational aspects of an organisation’s data quality efforts. To take data quality up a further level though, businesses can employ a data quality intelligence approach which enables them to achieve a much broader level of insight, analysis, reporting and alerts.

This will in turn allow the organisation to capture and store historical information about data quality, including how often an item was modified and how often data was erroneously flagged. More broadly, it will enable organisations to achieve critical analysis capabilities for these exceptions and any data issues arising, in addition to analysis capabilities for testing the effectiveness of key data controls and reporting capabilities for data quality KPIs, vendor and internal data source performance, control effectiveness and SLAs.

In short, data quality intelligence effectively forms a further layer on top of the operational data quality functionality provided by the framework, which helps to visualise what it has achieved, making sure that all data controls are effective, and that the organisation is achieving its KPIs and KRIs. Rather than being an operational tool, it is effectively a business intelligence solution, providing key insight into how the organisation is performing against its key data quality goals and targets. CEOs and chief risk officers (CROs) would potentially benefit from this functionality as would compliance and operational risk departments.

While the data quality framework helps deliver the operational aspects of an organisation’s data quality efforts, data quality intelligence gives key decision-makers and other stakeholders an insight into that approach, helping them measure its success and demonstrate the organisation is compliant with its own data quality policies and relevant industry regulations.

The financial services industry is starting to focus more on data quality. In Experian’s 2018 global data management benchmark report, 74% of financial institutions surveyed said they believed that data quality issues impact customer trust and perception and 86% saw data as an integral part of forming a business strategy.

Data quality matters. As Paul Malyon, Experian Data Quality’s Data Strategy Manager, puts it: “Simply put, if you capture poor quality data you will see poor quality results. Customer service, marketing and ultimately the bottom line will suffer.”

In financial services with its significant regulatory burden, the consequences of poor data quality are even more severe. And so, it is a timely moment for the rollout of the multi-layered approach outlined above, which brings a range of benefits, helping firms demonstrate the accuracy, completeness and timeliness of their data, which in turn helps them meet relevant regulatory requirements, and assess compliance with their own data quality objectives. There has never been a better time for financial services organisations to take the plunge and start getting their data quality processes up to scratch.

According to new research released this week by Dreyfus, a pioneer in US investing, half of individual investors (49%) have indicated they have yet to take any action to reevaluate their investment approach in light of the possibility of a shifting investment landscape, as we head into the eighth year of the economic recovery.

"As long-term risk/return expectations have shifted with an increase in inflation, the rise of US nationalism and record-low volatility, investors would be well-served to reevaluate their portfolios in light of changed circumstances to determine if they will continue to meet their investment objectives," said Mark Santero, Chief Executive Officer, The Dreyfus Corporation, a BNY Mellon company.

The "Helping Meet Investor Challenges Study" surveyed 1,250 investors with $50,000 or more in investable assets on their approach to investing. This is the first release of survey data that explores all elements of the group's investing lives, including engagement with investment professionals, portfolio allocations and appetite for risk. The study also surveyed 200 independent and institutionally-based advisors regarding the investing relationship between advisors and clients.

Older Investors Ignoring Past Market Precedents in Adjusting Portfolios

Older investors have had an opportunity to weather a variety of stock market highs, such as the bull markets from 1987-2000 and 2009 to the present, and lows, such as the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s, the stock market crash in 1987 and most recently the financial crisis of 2008. Yet, even with this past knowledge in the rearview mirror, the survey reveals:

• Sixty-one percent of investors aged 55+ indicated they have not or will not reevaluate their investment approach in today's existing investing environment.

In comparison, younger investors who experienced the 2008 market meltdown and who began their savings efforts in the earlier part of their careers demonstrated a forward-thinking approach to reevaluating their portfolios. This generation of investors between the ages of 21 and 34 indicated the following:

• Sixty-five percent had already evaluated their investment approach, compared to just 51% of those aged 35-54 and 39% of those aged 55+.
• A greater percentage of younger investors between 21-34 (63%) also indicated they had worked with an advisor in reevaluating their investments, while only a third (38%) of those 55+ had evaluated their investments with an advisor.

"Our survey revealed that younger investors have demonstrated in greater numbers a more proactive approach to reassessing their portfolios and seeking out their advisors for counsel, some of whom might lack the historical market experience and accumulated wealth of older investors," said Mark Santero.

Mass Affluent Investors Slow to Take Action on Their Portfolios

The survey also looked at the investment actions taken by mass affluent investors, those who had investable income between $250k and $2.5 million. The survey found nearly half of this audience had work to do in reviewing their portfolios and how more than a third had decided to do nothing with their portfolios:

• Forty-three percent of the total mass affluent investor audience had not reevaluated their investment approach in this new investment environment.
• Thirty-nine percent of mass affluent investors working with an advisor had not reevaluated their investment approach.

Investors Look to Advisors in Navigating the Way

Despite the last eight years of a US bull market, uncertainty is very much a reality in U.S. and global markets.

Yet a majority of investors remained on the sidelines, the survey found:

• Six in ten investors (60%) without a financial advisor are most likely to put off their plans to address today's market challenges, with only one-quarter (24%) saying that they plan to address challenges they face at some point in 2017.
• Seventeen percent said they don't have any plans to reevaluate their investment approach.

Santero added, "We believe investors who don't work with a professional advisor could greatly benefit from the insights an advisor can provide in tailoring a goals-based approach for their individual circumstances against today's investing environment of uneven economic growth. Options might include diversifying their US exposure with global fixed income and equities or considering dividend or alternative investing strategies."

Those individual investors who worked with an advisor had a greater likelihood of adjusting their portfolios. The findings revealed that:

• Almost three-quarters (65%) indicated they had reevaluated their investment approach, compared to two in five (40%) who had not worked with an advisor.
• Nearly three-quarters (73%) of advisors' clients changed their approach as a result of advice.

(Source: Dreyfus)