Risk, Transparency, and Secrecy

There’s an interesting discussion here that for the most part speaks for itself. I’ll only add that consensus is building that more useful data is required. Decisions about what to do with the data needn’t be made now, and uses will evolve over time, just as reporting of and use of public company data evolved over time and continues to change.

The priority now must be to create the framework to make material data useful to the right people. There’s no need to delay things pending decisions about who those people might be, but here’s a fact to keep in mind. The tools to allow the owners of particular data (and owners can range from customers to borrowers to lenders to securitizers to exchanges to self-regulatory organizations to the government and elsewhere) to control access to the data at a granular level are developing quickly, and those who develop frameworks to make such data usable should remember the insatiable appetite of markets for information. Any framework must be robust enough to accommodate both current and potential demand for information. That’s what makes extensibility a good starting point. It allows rapid development of a base framework and fast and easy updates and “re-standardization” when the market demands more information.