Banks bet on data to rescue research

Barclays, Morgan Stanley, UBS among those using data science to pep up their research offerings

In a search for unique data that can help investors make more money, analysts at Deutsche Bank have started talking to robots.

A project last year saw the bank’s recently formed primary research team programming its computers to interrogate “smart speaker” systems such as Amazon’s virtual concierge Alexa or Apple’s Siri.

The team quizzed the devices to find out if they favoured some products over others, so as to work out which products might benefit in a world where customers buy increasingly