Identifying big data’s opportunities, challenges, and implications in finance

Abstract

One of the latest innovations in business and technology is the use of big data, as daily data are generated by billions of events. The big data issue is now considered in the accountants and finance professionals’ field as one of the most important sources for the analysis of financial products and services. This study is very innovative, with our research aiming to identify the opportunities, challenges, and implications of big data in the finance area. It is our purpose to find competitive advantages in terms of the extent to which big data brings visible benefits, also pointing out the challenges that a company may face in this field, such as cases of customers’ data security or customer satisfaction processes. The identification of this kind of dynamics allows us to draw conclusions on the advantages of big data based on these analyses and big data’s deep impact on finance. In particular, big data is now commonly used by financial institutions and banks for analytical purposes in financial market contexts. We conducted an exploratory survey of the existing literature to highlight such connections. In the last part of our study, we also propose directions for future research.