Everyone Agrees Data Has Value.
The Hard Part Is the Plumbing.
A Forbes Technology Council piece this week picked up the same US report on China's data economy that Miles Benham wrote about recently. Read together, they point to the question most organisations have not yet asked.
Forbes and Miles Benham have both written about the same US report on China's data economy. Most organisations already accept that their data has value; the harder step is giving partners, investors and lenders the confidence to rely on it. That gap is legal and commercial as much as technical, and it is the gap the Isle of Man's Data Asset Foundation is designed to fill.
Read Miles Benham's articleIt is always encouraging when you see a subject you work on every day start to appear in the mainstream business press.
On 30 September, Forbes published a Technology Council article by Nino Letteriello, "The Future of Data Monetization Is Now: Lessons from the U.S. and China on the Data Economy". It draws on the same report that my colleague Miles Benham wrote about a few weeks ago: "The People's Republic of Data: How China Is Turning Data into Capital", published in August by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
Two quite different authors, writing for different audiences, landed on the same document within weeks of each other. I think that says something about where the conversation on data is heading.
Two readings of the same report
Miles's article looked at the report from a legal and policy angle. He explained, in plain terms, what China has done since it named data a factor of production in 2020: building data exchanges, letting companies record data on their balance sheets, and allowing them to borrow against it. He then walked through the questions the report's authors put to Congress, including whether the US needs a national data strategy, whether US accounting standards should recognise data as an asset, and whether federal agencies should be required to inventory and value the data they hold.
The Forbes piece comes at it from the perspective of a data management practitioner. Its author makes the point that China's experience shows how much infrastructure, time and legal and fiscal machinery it takes to turn data into economic value, even with the full weight of the state behind it. He argues that most organisations should not wait for governments, and sets out a practical path: build a culture that understands what data monetisation really means, develop the processes to identify valuable data and keep its quality high, and experiment with real users rather than building marketplaces nobody uses.
I agree with a great deal of that. I particularly like his broad definition of monetisation, which includes time saved, better decisions and the smart reuse of data an organisation already holds, not just selling datasets. Most of the value in data is unlocked inside the business long before anything is sold.
The step in between
Where I would add something is in the space between "we have good data and a culture that values it" and "someone else will pay for it, lend against it or rely on it".
That gap is not mainly technical. It is legal and commercial. Before a partner, investor or lender will put weight on a dataset, they want answers to some fairly old-fashioned questions. What exactly is the asset? Who holds the rights in it? On what terms can it be used? Has anyone independent checked how it is governed? And what happens if something goes wrong?
In my day-to-day work on commercial and technology contracts, those questions are usually answered, if at all, through a patchwork of licences, data sharing agreements and internal policies. That works up to a point. It does not scale well, and it rarely gives a third party the confidence it needs to treat data as something more than a cost.
This is one of the reasons both articles keep returning to national frameworks. As the Forbes author notes, individual companies cannot solve all of this complexity on their own. Something has to provide the common structure.
Where the Isle of Man comes in
The Isle of Man has taken one route to providing that structure. The Data Asset Foundation, introduced by the Foundations (Amendment) Act 2026, is a legal vehicle designed to hold data as a defined asset. Data is independently accredited against a published governance framework and recorded on a statutory register, and full registration confers a personal property right in the data asset on the foundation.
It is not the only possible approach, and it is still early days. But it is designed to answer exactly the questions above, and it fits alongside the practical steps the Forbes article recommends rather than replacing them. Culture and good data practice come first. A legal structure is what allows the value to travel beyond the organisation.
Worth following
If you have not yet read them, I would recommend both articles. The Forbes piece is a practical guide to starting the monetisation journey inside an organisation. Miles's article explains the bigger policy picture, and why the questions being asked in Washington are likely to reach the rest of us soon.
The direction of travel is clear. Data is being treated more and more like an asset. The organisations that benefit will be the ones that have worked out not just what their data is worth, but how to give others the confidence to rely on it.
Frequently Asked Questions
"The People's Republic of Data: How China Is Turning Data into Capital" was published in August 2026 by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. It looks at what China has done since it named data a factor of production in 2020, including building data exchanges, letting companies record data on their balance sheets and allowing them to borrow against it.
It argues that most organisations should not wait for governments. Its practical path is to build a culture that understands what data monetisation really means, develop the processes to identify valuable data and keep its quality high, and experiment with real users rather than building marketplaces nobody uses.
No. The Forbes article uses a broad definition that includes time saved, better decisions and the smart reuse of data an organisation already holds. Most of the value in data is unlocked inside the business long before anything is sold.
Before a partner, investor or lender puts weight on a dataset, they want to know what exactly the asset is, who holds the rights in it, on what terms it can be used, whether anyone independent has checked how it is governed, and what happens if something goes wrong. Those answers usually sit in a patchwork of licences, data sharing agreements and internal policies, which does not scale well.
It is an Isle of Man legal vehicle, introduced by the Foundations (Amendment) Act 2026, designed to hold data as a defined asset. Data is independently accredited against a published governance framework and recorded on a statutory register, and full registration confers a personal property right in the data asset on the foundation.
No. It fits alongside the practical steps the Forbes article recommends rather than replacing them. Culture and good data practice come first; a legal structure is what allows the value to travel beyond the organisation.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. You should take specific advice on your own circumstances before acting.
