Geospatial Insight, a provider of independent research derived from the analysis of satellite, aerial and drone imagery, has announced that financial services industry and quant community veteran Steve Wilcockson has joined the company.
Responsible for GeoFinance Market Development, Wilcockson (pictured), will drive client-facing activities for all Geospatial Insight Finance Sector products and will lead product management for RetailWatch, a consumer sentiment analysis dataset.
Geospatial Insight’s solutions for the Investment sector provide syndicated independent research reports and time-series datasets for quantitative investors or proprietary research insights for private clients, family offices and hedge funds.
Wilcockson was formerly Global Industry Manager for Financial Services at the engineering software company MathWorks, developers of MATLAB, where he worked for over 20 years among model builders and implementers including quants, quant developers, economists, actuaries, algo traders, portfolio managers and risk managers. With a background in Geography, Steve holds a Masters degrees from the University of Cambridge and the University of British Columbia.
Wilcockson says: “I am a passionate exponent of GeoFinance, the notion that quantitative finance models and data analytics can better account for and incorporate geographical contingency.” Adding, “I am looking forward to working with a great team at Geospatial Insight contributing to the incorporation of geospatial imagery within the rapidly emerging alternative data universe for financial services.”
Dan Schnurr, Co-Founder of Geospatial Insight, says: “We are delighted to welcome Steve into the Geospatial Insight team. Steve’s arrival undoubtedly enhances our capabilities to ensure that the successful launch of RetailWatch and the continued development of our Financial Services products supports the needs of our growing client base.”
“In the future, we expect quant firms to start making use of raw imagery, which along with Hexagon software and the licensing of our imagery processing algorithms, may enable funds to create their own research and differentiated alpha.”
