WHY AGILE, SCALABLE DATA MANAGEMENT IS KEY TO DIGITAL BANKING

By Jason Hand, Global Account Executive – Enterprise Sales, Commvault

 

Back at the start of 2019, before we’d ever heard of COVID-19 (hard to imagine these days, I know), mobile banking was predicted to overtake high street branch visits within two years. But the restrictions placed on daily life to get to grips with the pandemic proved to be a catalyst in speeding up adoption.

Although banks haven’t had to close during the UK lockdowns, they discouraged unnecessary visits — and many people new to online banking discovered that it could provide a quick and easy (and COVID-safe) way to manage their finances. No surprise then, that as summer came to an end, over three-quarters of the UK population were using some form of online banking and one in ten people had switched to a digital-only bank.

When it’s implemented well, online, digital and app-based banking is as easy as shopping with Amazon, booking a cab on Uber or grabbing a takeaway via Deliveroo. With so much potential to create a similar customer experience — and so much to lose if they fail — banks are under pressure to deliver on digital services. But their success (or otherwise) will depend on how well they manage their digital data and, in particular, how willing they are to adopt more agile, scalable, cloud-based solutions to underpin their new services.

 

Adopting New Technology in a Risk-Averse Sector

The UK’s financial services sector is undoubtedly slow when it comes to adopting new technology. Indeed, many UK banks continue to rely on mainframes. This cautiousness stems from the continued rise in cybercrime and the fear of non-compliance with FCA and data protection regulations.

Banks have to tread a thin line. They do want to embrace technology that will help them scale and support customer demand for digital services. But they can only do so with an IT infrastructure that keeps out cybercriminals, hackers and anyone else without explicit authorisation to view the data. So, if their legacy IT systems are secure and protect customer data from cybercriminals, banks do not want to risk implementing new solutions that could leave them exposed — even if those old systems make them less nimble and less responsive to changing customer demands.

 

Open Banking and Shared Financial Data

The increased digitalisation across the sector leaves banks facing a second security and data management challenge. Once, they only had to worry about managing their data and keeping it safe within their closed IT environments. Now Open Banking — a UK government-backed programme — encourages banks to securely share their data with trusted third-party financial services providers via an API (Application Programming Interface).

Typically, these third-party providers offer apps to assist with utility bill management, accounting and auditing, and savings (usually rounding up apps). Once a user grants authorisation, the app directly interfaces with that user’s current account. Customers — whether individuals or SMBs — love them, but for banks, they’ve meant a reassessment of security and data management strategies.

 

What Constitutes Good Data Management?

To begin with, it could mean switching to a single data management solution. Banks historically have deployed several different products to manage their data. Multiple applications add complexity and  need more people to oversee them operationally. This approach will add cost, risk, and ultimately will not align to their digital transformation agendas.

Running multiple data management solutions makes it harder to get a holistic view, understand customer behaviour and predict future trends. It also creates unnecessary security risks. Consolidating data management platforms reduces these risks and costs. At the same time, fewer inter-app data transfer points decrease the number of potential weak-link entry points for hackers and cybercriminals. From a practical point of view, using a single data management solution also enables all relevant data points in a hybrid world to be viewed on a single pane of glass — making it much easier to digest, interpret and deliver data management as a service back to their internal clients.

Automating data management components can improve security and cut costs by reducing human contact. In addition, it enables faster and more accurate data management that can accelerate cloud adoption where data management is key to success.

It’s worth saying at this point that banks have been slow on the uptake of both public and private cloud technology, and are clearly still concerned about security and privacy threats. This is despite the fact that cloud computing — particularly with a zero-trust approach to security — has become a lot safer and carries far less risk.

In the middle of 2019, the Bank of England published a report that estimated the world’s largest global banks conducted just a quarter of their activities in the public cloud or software hosted in the cloud. But change is happening, albeit slowly. Larger banks have started to recognise that cloud computing holds the key to running an agile business  — allowing them to scale their online services and safely store, process and mine vast amounts of digital customer data.

The maturation of the hybrid cloud market may have played a role in increased adoption and allayed many of the sector’s previous doubts. A hybrid cloud infrastructure combines public cloud, private cloud and on-premises architecture, giving users the flexibility to keep some applications and systems (those with particularly sensitive information, for example) within their own four walls while still being able to migrate other systems. It’s an elegant and cost-efficient way to balance security, scalability and compliance.

 

Demand for the Future

With so much change taking place across the UK banking sector, data management has never been more critical. Open Banking, consumer demand for digital banking, and app-based banks like Starling and Monzo are all shaking up the market. But the threats from cybercriminals and the risk of falling foul of FCA regulations are still very much present. And, while navigating all these challenges, banks still face pressure from shareholders and investors to make a profit, retain customers and grow the business.

For these reasons, data management strategy — and linked to that, the pace and effectiveness of cloud computing adoption — are now two of the most significant determining factors in how banks cope today, and how effectively they will operate in the future. As such, 2021 should be the year that most banks and financial organisations embrace and invest in new technology when it comes to data management.

 

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