How banks can benefit from implementing data governance | 7wData

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In banking, data governance is about meeting both regulatory and internal requirements. Find out what's required of your data governance plans by reading this guide.

As most companies today face remarkable data overload, the importance of effective data governance frameworks continues to grow. Banks in particular need to derive value from data for both the innovation and modernization of their operations as well as for continued compliance and ethical management of the data they work with. In this guide, we cover the details of how and why banks can benefit from a strong data governance framework.

Today’s economic landscape requires most if not all industries to enhance their data-driven capabilities in the market to maintain a competitive edge. The banking sector is no exception. The introduction of data governance models in banking gives banks the resources they need to upgrade their current procedures and policies to improve their data protection mechanisms.

Data governance specifications also improve banks’ data analysis capabilities for better decision-making. Data governance in banking means delivering tools for the banking sector to not only optimize its effectiveness and innovation but also support risk management and regulatory reporting.

It is a requirement for banks to keep all the data they have secure, based on a variety of federal and state compliance regulations. Regulatory requirements continue to pressure the banking industry to get data governance under control as the consequences of data violations become more costly.

With the right data governance plan in place, banks always know exactly what data they have access to. They also always know where data is located, which ensures they can enforce the right controls — even during complicated projects like cloud migrations.

Awareness of the location of data, the regulations it is liable to and the correct approach to protection is key for successful cloud migration and other digital transformation projects. Data governance provides pertinent tagging to ensure banks satisfy regulatory requirements with the correct access and security controls.

Manual data management is tedious, inefficient and expensive. The responsibility of manual data management is often placed at the doorstep of IT teams, which means financial institutions frequently foot the costs of maintaining active IT teams.

Data governance relieves the manual burdens of discovering, granting access to and implementing security to data through centralizing technologies, effectively ending the need for multiple costly third-party systems and sprawling IT teams. The self-service capabilities of many data governance tools ensure that organizations maintain secure data access without incurring unnecessary costs.

The financial sector is now characterized by relentless competition between institutions and saturation for newcomers. As a result, market insights have become a necessity for a competitive advantage. Through data analysis initiatives, banks can confidently approach their data and derive actionable insights.

Data governance supports company-wide analysis and its processes, ensuring that there is easy access to data and that it is well organized. This makes it easier to innovate and use data across the organization as opposed to leaving the responsibility solely to leadership teams.

Data-driven models are increasingly transforming how organizations handle business goals and objectives.