In our recent data management survey, 75% of respondents identified time to market and user adoption as their biggest challenge.   As is often the case with big picture projects, the theory sounds great: if the business struggles to collect the right data at the right time to meet its business or regulatory objectives, surely it makes sense to create a central repository of all the financial data that matters? Building a product, customer, transaction and position warehouse or master data repository will make it possible to assure data quality and availability. Read More »

Underlying data content makes up the majority of spending in corporate actions technology. Greater data content and format standardization should lead firms to use more complex automation software, thus lowering the price per unit. Read More »

The increasing levels of technology investment in transaction banking reflect the importance of these business lines. We recently conducted an online survey of global transaction banking (GTS) executives, focused on organizational investment priorities for the next 2 years; including delivery channels, back office systems, risk management applications to support cash/treasury management, and trade finance.  Read More »

With the proliferation of data and the increasing complexity of insurance processes, the effects of inadequate data and data errors on insurance carriers’ bottom-line financials has significantly increased. Inadequate data and errors generate high policy re-rate ratios, frequent reissue of bills, high call-back rates in the contact center, and re-underwriting of entire books of business. In our recent survey, half of workers indicated that corporate data is in an unusable format leading to unproductive analysis 67% of the time. Carriers’ traditional methods of data correction, including back-end inspections and after-the-fact phone surveys, do not suffice. Read More »

In our recent survey, an overwhelming 84% of HNW clients who rated their financial planning experience as excellent expressed satisfaction with their wealth management firm, compared to only a quarter of those who rated their planning experience as fair to good. Of those who rated their planning experience as excellent, nearly 60% increased assets and/or purchased additional products or services. Read More »

Although consumer lending markets have stabilized in the United States and recovered strongly in most European countries, the specter of financial institution and government debt crises could cause the consumer lending recovery to stall. The key question now is: do financial institutions have the money to lend to every consumer that qualifies for a loan? Read More »

Restructuring business operations will take several years and ultimately change both the business itself as well as how it functions. One consequence of internal cutbacks is that many services must still be delivered.   This need will fuel a 23.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in business process outsourcing (BPO) through 2015. Financial institutions are raising the bar on BPO service and performance expectations – which is to be expected. In many ways this is a natural process where productivity gains are part of the evolution of business and technology. Coupled with growing pressure to reduce cost in protecting the bottom line, a wave of major staff cuts across the industry, and in the face of mandated spending on technology for compliance, expectations placed on outsourcing service providers will continue to increase through 2015. Read More »

 Regulatory pressure was a central focus of the discussion. What was most interesting was that while there is much talk about regulatory demands and the collective weight of Dodd Frank Act, FATCA, MiFID II, Solvency II, etc., capital markets institutions are holding  back making the big investments required to meet all the regulatory obligations. What’s holding them back? Obviously it is partly the ongoing economic and market malaise, but it is also a lack of clarity around the exact nature of  regulations. In the meantime, CFOs at institutions are looking closely at every spending proposal in the name of regulation, and asking the questions: “do we have to do this right now? Can it wait? What’s the leverage in spending this amount?” Read More »

Interchange price controls prescribed under Dodd-Frank are now in effect for the card business; 2012 business plans should reflect revenue reductions for debit card acceptance.   Concurrently, fundamental aspects of the US debit account remain in flux.   Issuers continue toiling with product pricing and whether the consumer expectation of free banking services is a sustainable business model.  Read More »