By Barley Laing, the UK Managing Director at Melissa
Ensuring global data governance and compliance is critical for those in financial services. However, too many in this sector aren’t as rigorous at implementing it as effectively as they should be.
Consequently, they may not be as thorough with their data processes in adhering to GDPR, the EU’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), for example.
This is backed up by research that highlights while a large number of IT decision makers at financial institutions acknowledge the importance of data security, at 86%, only half are confident in their organisation’s compliance with existing global regulations, which is only set to increase.
Inaccurate customer data is a significant issue
Inadequate data governance and compliance is often caused by having poor quality customer data, which leads to fines and tarnished reputations, as well as a negative customer experience and possible fraud.
One big issue with having poor quality customer data is the increased vulnerability to data breaches caused by cyberattacks often powered by AI, with data breaches costing financial services organisations on average $5.56 million in 2025. A figure that’s 25% higher than the global average across other industries.
Implement data quality processes
Ensuring rigorous customer data quality processes are in place both at the customer onboarding stage and within existing customer databases is a big step towards best practice global data governance and compliance. The quality of customer data influences everything from end-to-end fraud prevention, to delivering simple ID checks and effective personalisation.
Having access to accurate customer contact information, such as name, address, email and phone number, makes the verification process more reliable. Using this data automated ID verification technology can confidently cross-reference the information provided against official databases, or other authoritative sources, without discrepancies that could lead to false positives or negatives.
Quality customer contact data improves efficiencies regarding personalisation with customer communications, by helping to deliver a single customer view (SCV). This is insight that can be used by tools, such as AI, to successfully deliver customer relationship management (CRM) campaigns, and upsell to customers.
Address lookup and autocomplete
Best practice data governance and compliance starts by using a lookup or autocomplete service, because these deliver efficiencies in collecting accurate customer data at the onboarding stage. An address lookup tool, for example, can provide correct address data in real-time by automatically delivering a properly formatted, accurate address when the user starts to input theirs. This reduces the number of keystrokes required by up to 81 per cent when entering an address, speeding up the onboarding process, enhancing the entire experience, making it more likely that an application or purchase will be completed.
Similar tools can correctly collect email addresses, telephone numbers and names at the first point of contact.
Deduplicate customer data
Data duplication rates of 10 to 30 per cent on customer databases are not unusual. It often occurs when errors in contact data collection takes place at different touchpoints, when two departments merge their data, or when merging datasets after a business acquisition. Duplication can add cost in terms of time and money, particularly with printed communications. For instance, not only is sending the same letter twice to a customer a waste of money in print and distribution costs, but there’s reputational damage as customers lose trust in how you are handling their data.
An advanced fuzzy matching tool can help eliminate duplicate data. Such a service can merge and purge the most challenging records and create a ‘single user record’, which delivers an optimum single customer view (SCV) for improved marketing activity.
Data cleansing and suppression
Data suppression or data cleansing is an important part of the data cleaning, and therefore the data governance and compliance process, because these services highlight those customers who have moved or are no longer at the address on file. Having access to the National Change of Address (NCOA) database is a vital part of this approach. Available in the UK and US, and some other countries, it highlights those who have moved, and provides their new address.
In addition to eliminating inaccurate addresses, data cleansing services can also include deceased flagging to stop mail and other communications from being sent to individuals who have passed away — helping to avoid causing distress to their family and friends.
Therefore, adopting suppression strategies enables those in financial services to cut costs, maintain trust, combat fraud and support best practice data governance.
In conclusion
At the crux of effective data governance and compliance is data quality, because of the benefits it delivers in supporting ID verification, reducing the impact of fraud and fines, while delivering personalisation, upselling and trust with customers, to provide a standout customer experience. Therefore, in an age of increasing global regulations and AI driving fraud, put best practice data quality processes in place. They are cost effective and can often be delivered with small changes to existing procedures.
