Financial services businesses within the UK are becoming more reliant on scraping alternative data sources, with over 60% using alternative data to improve their decision-making process. The new report ‘The Growing Importance of Alternative Data in the Finance Industry’ by Oxylabs highlights the significant rise in web scraping for alternative data over the last year or so.

Over 200 senior data decision-makers in the UK finance industry were interviewed on their existing approach to data management. The findings indicated that web scraping and financial transitions were the most popular sources of alternative data for financial services organisations. This includes non-traditional data sources that may not have been assessed before, such as social media posts, website traffic and other data sources. Conventional sources like official public data and third-party data are still considered valuable but have been overtaken by the significant rise in alternative data.

Julius Cerniauskas, the CEO at Oxylabs, explains that the rise in online alternative data sources has created a sharp increase in demand for web scraping services from financial organisations looking to tackle the challenges from the pandemic.

Cerniauskas states that they have experienced a surge in inquiries from businesses in the financial services industry over the last year, so he explains that they are motivated to learn how these organisations were approaching data collection and analysis.

Alternative data can be implemented to gain a better understanding of business performance, market trends and future investment plans. Financial services businesses can transform alternative real-time data into clear, actionable insights that are far more likely to report significant improvements in decision-making.

Business leaders in the finance industry are continuing to explore new ways of improving investment decisions and reducing risk to their business, so it’s understandable to see that the global alternative data industry is growing and predicted to continue increasing over the next few years.

Looking at the research, it’s clear that financial services businesses are increasingly looking to utilise alternative data to gain more value and discover new insights into performance, industry trends and potential investment opportunities. Data-focused organisations will be in a stronger position to convert this valuable information into actionable insights and deliver strategic decisions in a post-pandemic economy.