Today more than ever before, financial services organizations are striving to gain a competitive edge, deliver more value to customers, reduce risk, and respond more quickly to the needs of the business. This requires the use of not only historical data but also operational data to gain real-time visibility of all departments within the organization, as well their counterparts in other regions.
This enterprise view can have wide-reaching benefits for firms, helping to improve everything from understanding market risk, risk reporting and cash flow, to regulatory compliance, and a comprehensive view of customer and institutional client activity.
However, getting to the point of being able to access all of their data, especially in real time, can be challenging, owing to the growing volumes and complexities of data that firms must deal with.
Surveying those in the know
To understand financial services organizations’ data exploration challenges, key data initiatives, and priorities for the coming year, we commissioned data analysts Vitreous World to survey 554 business leaders within financial services companies, including commercial, investment, and retail banks, across 12 countries globally: including the US, Canada, Brazil, UK and Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. The insights we uncovered have formed the basis for our latest report, “ The Top Data and Technology Challenges in Financial Services.”
Here’s a snapshot of what we discovered:
- 86% of global financial services institutions lack confidence in using their data to drive decision-making.
- Their biggest data challenges are delayed access to data (37%), not being able to get the data from all the needed sources (33%), and not getting it in the format needed (32%).
- An overwhelming 98% believe that there are data and application silos within their organization.
- More than half (51%) cite gaining access to real-time data from across the business for improved decision making as their highest technology priority for the next 12 months.
- 45% of financial services firms would like to collaborate with fintechs or neobanks, and over a third (36%) of firms believe that they are ahead of the competition.
Tackling their challenges
The report also explores how firms can overcome these issues and ensure that their data architectures deliver the capabilities needed to drive innovation and future-proof their organizations. For instance, 77% of respondents saying they would consider implementing a data fabric to simplify access to distributed data, with this figure rising to 93% in the US.
These capabilities will empower financial services businesses to make more informed decisions, gain the critical insights required to meet their top business challenges, and adapt to changes and disruptive events in the moment.
If you’d like to find out more about the top challenges reported by financial services firms, and their priorities for the coming year, check out the full report.
