BISA Magazine - Quarter 2, 2017 - 17

Smart wealth managers won't be data
scientists, but they will have access to,
and be able to use, the data science
tool box.

lec Ross has this warning
to banks: Take command
of data science within
your institution - or be
prepared to have your
lunch eaten.

"We have a Pacific Ocean's worth of
data today," and those who can draw
intelligence from that data will succeed,
said Ross, author and former senior
advisor for innovation at the State Department and a candidate in Maryland's
2018 gubernatorial race.
A relationship manager in a bank need
not be a data scientist or a mathematician, he told BISA Magazine, but they
need to have that in their toolbox.
Ross knows something about banks.
He grew up in the coal country of
Charleston, West Virginia and worked
in a bank there during breaks from
school. He recounted his experiences
in a keynote address at BISA's 2017
Annual Convention.
Each evening, the bank's computer performed the reconciliation of the day's
transactions. This was 20-plus years
ago and, at that time, a bank couldn't
really trust its computers, so Ross and
others were sent to a room with adding machines to manually sum up the
day's transactions, double-checking the
computer's work.

"That experience shaped my career," he
told the audience. He would find better
ways to apply technology to economic
and social tasks and problems.

Spreading the wealth
Ross started a new company, One Economy, aimed at bringing asset management to a broader segment of the population, including low-income people.
In the mountains of West Virginia, for
example, that might be people who had
been living completely off the financial
grid - keeping their money under
the proverbial mattress. The business
grew, attracting hundreds of employees,
and Ross was later tapped to advise
then-presidential candidate Barack
Obama on developing a technology and
innovation plan. He joined the State
Department under the Obama administration as senior advisor for innovation.

17
BISA Magazine

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BISA Magazine - Quarter 2, 2017