MasterCard today is announcing the launch of their new “Sector Insights” reports: a weekly spinoff of their Spending Pulse tracker that will provide actionable big data to merchants, issuers and governments alike. What type of transactional information does Sector Insights contain, and how does it reflect current regulatory, economic and consumer trends? PYMNTS.com spoke with Sarah Quinlan, SVP at MasterCard Advisors, to learn.

Big data may be all the rage in retail right now, but if the information you’re using on is too outdated or vague to be actionable, it’s of limited use.

That’s a problem MasterCard is solving through the release of their new Sector Insight reports: weekly, segmented breakdowns of the retail industry that promise to provide timely data to merchants, issuers and governments alike. PYMNTS.com spoke with Sarah Quinlan, senior vice president at MasterCard Advisors, about what Sector Insights means for an industry hungry for more and better information.

“What’s of real importance to us here is what makes this data actionable,” Quinlan said of the new Sector Insights report. “Obviously it has to be early and it has to be accurate. So what we’ve done here at MasterCard is taken the data that everybody knows we’ve been processing for years, that we display in our Spending Pulse report. Now we’ve made indices out of that into different sectors that we’re going to providing information on,” she explained.

“And what I think is very exciting about that is that I think when it’s weekly data, and most merchants aren’t even monthly anymore, it gives the investment community, the issuers and the merchants data points that they wouldn’t normally have in a much more timely fashion.”

According to Quinlan, Sector Insights will break data down on total sales, total transactions and amount per transaction on a weekly basis, providing “granular data points” that can be used to truly evaluate a sector’s performance.

Merchants can use the information to judge themselves against the industry as a whole, while issuers can see how their co-branded campaigns are performing. Governments can also use the data to see which types of retail are most popular with their demographics, then use that information to court partnerships and lead to an increase in sales tax.

Quinlan also pointed out that the immediacy with which the data is produced allows it to highlight trends in policy, regulation or other factors. As an example, she cited the payroll tax, healthcare reforms and increase in retail gas prices as “headwinds to spending” in February.

The home furnishing segment of Sector Insights actually grew over this period, however, reflecting the positive employment numbers that have come out recently as well.

“It was the first gain that we saw in construction employment, which means houses are being built, which of course means people are buying houses and have to furnish houses,” Quinlan said. “It reflects exactly what came out.”

To hear more from Quinlan on MasterCard’s Sector Insights release, listen to the full podcast below.

*If you have trouble with the audio player above, click here.

Sarah Quinlan is a Senior Vice President at MasterCard Advisors, responsible for Market Insights, which produces MasterCard SpendingPulse, a macro-economic indicator. Her team develops products that utilize MasterCard’s aggregated anonymous transaction data to delineate actionable trends.

Prior to joining MasterCard Advisors, she was the Founder and CIO of Katen Capital, a global macro hedge fund manager.

Previously, she was the Chief Investment Officer and Head of Alternatives for Saad Financial Services, S.A. Prior to joining Saad, she was a portfolio manager at UBS, and at Lloyds TSB focusing on alternative investments. She was co-founder and portfolio manager of TwentyFirst Century Advisors, a small and mid-cap long/short hedge fund which was ranked in the Top 10 of Mar Hedge.

Ms. Quinlan began her career at Salomon Brothers Inc. in mortgage sales and trading.

Ms. Quinlan also was the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of ClienTec, a thin client computer company which was sold in 2000.

She received her BA and MBA from the University of Chicago in Politics, Economics, Rhetoric and Law with Special Honors and in Finance and Accounting, respectively