As Steve Jobs has frequently observed, “Creativity is connecting things”. It became essential, and a lack of interconnection between technology and the business areas in the financial world will only create hidden risks; more regulation will not make them disappear. Once we have agreed to look at IT and technology in a bank the same way as we look at businesses and markets, we will discover that a separation between IT and business will no longer work and must be unified in different ways. One way is, to have experts with work experience like engineers in the automobile industry who drive their own car and are crazy about it. The fact is that today’s setup should be changed so that IT is applied in a more practical way. Only then will IT be able to provide high quality solutions and create real value to organizations. Organizations are also able to monitor their core processes according to high standards and almost effortlessly.
. . . Management of client data is a crucial activity and is of central importance in the day-to-day running of a bank. All procedures around client data need to be strongly monitored and controlled.
It is a fact that more and more big data will be used in the future in a higher quality and pre-defined way so that only data from chosen sources will be allowed. This can help a bank to better understand and therefore to better support their clients and their employees.
The point is that once banks have decided what the business model and strategy of their organization is, they need to make the entire organization sensitive with regard to the detection of governance violations around these core activities.
Pressure in day-to-day activities does not often allow adherence to all aspects of a governance process. Therefore we occasionally lack sensitivity to focus on core processes first, and issues like risk exposures which are in breach of limits related to risks are always possible. This lack of control in daily processes allows the avoidance of the reporting of real risks to the rest of the organization or authorities.
Source: Banks of the Future, by Ella Thuiner; Published by Springer, © 2015