Banking on Data Governance in the New Norm

360° views of Risk & Compliance

Suppose there is one lesson to be learned from this pandemic environment, it is that data can make the difference between life and death. Where there are transparency and responsiveness in handling, managing, and representing data, decisions to safeguard people and places can be made swiftly and effectively. We’ve firmly established that data management is the cornerstone of competitive advantage through our clients’ experiences, especially organizations that want to create more business value out of the vast amounts of data available. Data that is often scattered, difficult to access, and to understand.

 

Things aren’t the same anymore

The new normal isn’t new anymore, and we best be prepared to do things differently in the long run. Like financial services firms (FSI), essential service providers are now hindered by a lack of face-to-face engagement. Financial services traditionally want to have that human-touch or personal interaction. It rings true that not all banking customers are comfortable dealing with their investments or life savings through a digital assistant. 

At the same time, customers are conditioned to be increasingly mobile, not just the younger generation who are already mobile natives. Still, for the rest of us, safe-distancing and other pandemic-related changes shape how we have become more digitally-savvy. This presents an opportunity to collect and connect data from customer data, location services, and engagement preferences to offer a banking customer’s holistic and real-time view. 

With that in mind, Gartner listed several actions for FSIs to consider, one of which is to be agile enough to accommodate customer circumstances. As Joanne Pollitt, Research Vice President, Analyst, Gartner detailed, digital preparedness comprises three pillars – Technology Building Blocks, Execution Components, and Business Outcomes. At the top of these technology building blocks, data, and analytics underpins our capabilities to drive meaningful insights for decision-making with business and customer strategies. 

 

Governance driving Excellence

You may be familiar with the phrase “rubbish in, rubbish out.” Proper Data Management must be instituted from the very beginning and through-out the data lifecycle. To provide better visibility into an organization’s data assets to drive a better and quicker decision, you first need to have strong Data Governance. Data Governance means “the exercise of decision-making and authority for data-related matters.” It concerns any individual or group interested in how data is originated, collected, processed, secured, and enhanced within their groups or organizations. 

This is exceptionally important to keep top-of-mind when designing your digital preparedness strategy for FSIs in an industry with increasingly stringent data protection regulations and consumer data rights. 

To better illustrate how different components of Data Governance work together:

  • If Data Governance is the story to tell
  • Chapters will be your rules around Reference and Master Data Management;
  • The story’s language it is written in is Data Literacy;
  • Connections between characters will be Data Discovery/Profiling;
  • History and contexts build your Data Lineage;
  • Good editing ensures your Data Quality;
  • And above all, a five-star review provides the story’s tracking and performance through Data Intelligence/Analytics.

How do all of the above apply to the imperatives of digital preparedness? Data analytics’ apparent function for business stakeholders is to access corporate assets without the complexity of creating balkanized data warehouses or hard-to-manage extracts. Simultaneously, we have to go beyond simple data profiling to examine data, locate important entities, and reveal hidden relationships across distinct data sources. Then quickly build and display comprehensive entity relationship diagrams and data models to meet new business requirements. This is how Data Governance connects the dots between Technology Building Blocks, Execution Components, and Business Outcomes.

 

What’s your appetite?

FSIs must have the right foundation in place so that they can connect the data across their organization, to be able to govern and secure that data, and even bring in outside data from partners through APIs. However, the last element may bring about unintended risks and consequences without sufficient planning.

What does GDPR, PDPA, and other similar Consumer Data Protection Act have to do with your data analytics? Well, a lot. How do you ensure you can accelerate digitalization and bring confidence to customers, without infringing on data privacy regulations and consumer data rights? As Mariah Tauer, Marketing Content Specialist, TIBCO, wrote in her blog on open banking, “Data is the asset that allows you to keep your customers at the center of your business strategy.” On the flip side, unifying your master, reference, and metadata can help you quickly understand your customers’ opportunities and potential infringement to customer privacy. 

In master data management (MDM), the challenge is that views are limited to master and reference data relationships. When describing their ideal 360° views, many customers wish to have the contextual cross-domain relationships and detail from transactional systems. And we know why. As a dataset, a blended 360° view is useful for analyses that need to consider the aligned dimensions and transactions over time. That’s one immediate business benefit for the shorter term. In the long term, the 360° view also creates a robust risk assessment model that helps enterprises future-proof their data investments. 

Risk management and assessment are not limited to industry-specific use cases like anti-money laundering, trade surveillance, credit/debit card monitoring, but even to address the fundamentals like online operations. The practice of using data to become more competitive is a new reality, so to learn why Risk Assessment 360° makes perfect sense, join Robert Eve, Senior Director, Data Management Thought Leadership, and I as we share the tricks to fast-track your success. 

 

No one-size-fits-all, but we start today

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to how Data Governance can be implemented, understanding the framework and speaking to the right partners who can map these pieces together is of urgent importance. Learn more about Data Governance with my guide to data as a Language or download this ebook on open banking innovations from TIBCO to take your first steps today.

 

Ascention Data as A Language series

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Ascention wishes to impart skills and knowledge.  The team at Ascention is always willing to share our experiences to assist your team’s progress – simply contact us to start an informal, no-obligation discussion.

Ascention Contact:   Ben Elters,   Client Director     E: ben.elters@ascention.com     M: +61 415 500 563