Perceptions of independent financial advisors on the usefulness of big data in the context of decision making in the UK

Abstract: Big data analytics (BDA) are based on massive amounts of structured and unstructured data and should extract meaningful, accurate, and relevant data. However, what is considered as meaningful and relevant is a perception of the analyst. In our paper we focused on perceptions and not on the technical implementation of BDA. For this we looked into one of the most advanced services – the financial services market in the UK. We chose eight independent financial advisors who have had first-hand experiences with large amounts of structured and unstructured data. Results show that there is moderate enthusiasm about the new possibilities of BDA such as better decision making and better market segmentation. This implies the necessity for easy to use tools and training on the side of the financial advisor as well as on the client’s side. The paper fills a research gap by analysing the actual impact of BDA on a real company and trying to measure the value of BDA for a financial organisation in form of improved customer relationship through prescriptive analytics