KPMG and Imperial College London join forces to take on 'big data'

A new generation of number-crunchers — to help banks predict fraud and retailers better understand consumer trends — is to be created under a new £20 million partnership between accountants KPMG and Imperial College London.

The new Centre for Advanced Business Analytics aims to create about 800 new data scientists over the next eight years, led by Imperial’s researchers.

Carrying out up to 20 projects a year, it will focus on developing tools to use “big data” — large and complex masses of data too big for traditional analysis — for practical applications in business.

KPMG’s UK chairman Simon Collins said the idea was to use the data to drive new industries and new services.