VIDEO | KPMG US, Global & US CDO: Being Proactive and Transparent Drives Value

(US and Canada) Jodi Morton, Global and US Chief Data Officer, KPMG US, speaks with Mitchell Roberts, Director of Product Marketing, TripleBlind, about data strategies to resolve regulation issues, managing data while leveraging it for analytics and data science, and data commercialization’s role in KPMG’s roadmap.

Morton says KPMG’s fundamental data strategy is understanding laws and regulations, including regulator expectations, internal policies, and clients’ data expectations. She notes they focus on learning the business outcomes when going through new use cases. 

Morton believes collaboration and communication are the keys to success. KPMG’s governance council, she notes, is composed of people from the risk management sector and the Office of the General Council. Hence, the appropriate people must discuss the value proposition of a specific analysis and figure out ways to work around the necessities.

Morton says working around sensitive data demands undivided attention because they need to adhere to specific regulations and policies. Hence, companies must take them into account when implementing data strategies. She highlights the requirement of being proactive and transparent with partners to drive value from sensitive data.

KPMG builds everything from its foundation, she continues. The foundation consists of the appropriate teams, processes, governance, controls, and data available across technical platforms. Morton and her team work with the foundational data assets and provide analysis-ready data for employees working with clients across the firm.

Morton further states that it combines all the data elements into a rich data management ecosystem. She and her team focus on delivering value through executing use cases on the foundational data assets.

She highlights one of the use cases — working on ESG — to procure and include certain data sets in the enterprise data lake. Morton says leveraging this data helps the advisory sector employees deliver services and value to the ESG client base.

Morton maintains that the building process is ongoing, with new capabilities, rapidly emerging data, and new use cases continuously enriching the firm’s analytic domain.

Regarding the democratization of data at KPMG, Morton states that KPMG is bringing in ESG through third-party providers to deliver advisory services to clients. She highlights KPMG’s effort program — Accelerate 2025 — which is related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

In conclusion, Morton says her KPMG team’s primary focus is deriving value from third-party data, and they must understand data governance while procuring that data.