JPMorgan puts data at the forefront with new head of analytics

Dive Brief:

Big Data rules, and big companies are changing their tune to the technology of the times. JPMorgan Chase announced Samik Chandarana as the new head of CIB analytics and data science, according to a company memo shared with CIO Dive. Chandarana will coordinate with the Data Science team, the chief data officer and CIB technology teams and businesses to build out and support data investment and infrastructure.
The company has implemented several advanced technologies, such as machine learning prospecting tools and a first of its kind artificial intelligence trading strategy. JPMorgan hopes to continue its technology progress with a concerted analytics and data science strategy under Chandarana's guidance.
Chandarana's new position is not the only leadership change in the company's technology department. Geoffrey Zweig left Microsoft and became the global head of machine learning for JPMorgan in January, and Lori Beer became the new CIO in September.

Dive Insight:

JPMorgan boasts a $9.5 billion technology budget and has already extended its reach into AI, ML, blockchain, software and Big Data. As the new CIO doubles down on cybersecurity, robotics and machine learning, Chandarana will spearhead CIB Big Data progress.

As data analytics learns to pull more insight from virtually any pool of data, other large companies are also ramping up data science programs. Cloud providers like Microsoft now offer customers a low priced data storage tier in their clouds so rarely needed or accessed information can be held on to for analytics later. Microsoft, IBM and SAP unveiled expanded data analytics portfolios in September.

As a financial company and not a service vendor like Microsoft, Oracle or IBM, JPMorgan's focus on in-house development and deployment is more unusual. Airbnb and Uber have also built data systems using AI and ML from the bottom up, but such accomplishments are often restricted to massive corporations with sufficient capital. For SMBs, a reliance on service vendors for Big Data solutions persists.