Top Financial Services Priorities

The People, Practices and Processes Involved

Paxata and FIMA (Financial Information Management Association) collaborated on a benchmark study examining the current state of information management and governance for financial institutions (FIs).

The research outlines an astounding view of compliance pressures and illustrates how the uncertainty of meeting future regulatory burdens are inducing FIs to invigorate their information practices.

While driving revenuebusiness growth and reducing costs are the top two initiatives among financial information management and governance executives, compliance-related initiatives – including anti-money laundering (AML), surveillance, fraud detection, trade, and monitoring of politically exposed people (PEP) – continue to be critical, given the vital roles they play in determining an FI’s reputation and longevity.

The benchmark study shows that FIs remain encumbered by compliance-related issues:

• 77% devote more than a quarter of their analytics activities to compliance needs
• 65% require 35+ IT and business employees to satisfactorily address their organization’s regulatory reporting
• 50% rely heavily on their IT departments to prepare data for these projects
• The other 50%, where the business side gets involved, mainly (94%) uses Excel

In short, the business side is still deeply reliant on the IT department or antiquated tools to address compliance needs. In our next blog, we will discuss the limitations of this approach and solutions to overcome them.

Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts on the shortcomings of current approaches to information management in financial services and the technology disruptions in this sector.