Almost nine out of ten IT directors working in the
financial services sector say complying with regulatory
requirements is crucial to their business, but only a minority are
confident about their capabilities in several key compliance areas,
including document management and archiving and retrieval
systems.
The findings, from a survey by research firm Freeform Dynamics,
were collected against the backdrop of an increased compliance
burden on financial services, with regulations such as
Sarbanes-Oxley in the US and Basel 2 and the forthcoming MiFID
directive in Europe looming large on the CIO’s agenda.
Although financial services regulation is increasingly demanding
the effective retrieval and archiving of held data, only a minority
of respondents said they were fully satisfied with their data
management capabilities.
Just under half thought their internal and customer document
management and archiving and retrieval systems were up to
scratch.
Only around one in 10 are satisfied with their existing
telephone call recording and retrieval and e-mail logging,
archiving and retrieval capabilities, while just one in 20 is fully
satisfied with their data capture and retrieval capabilities around
instant messaging.
But respondents also emphasised that compliance was only one
driver to make improvements. They noted that one of the principal
difficulties encountered by internal users lay in locating,
accessing and presenting information as part of their day-to-day
responsibilities.
This meant many IT chiefs saw the best way to present a business
case for infrastructure improvements to bring about a step-change
in data-handling capabilities was to emphasise the ability to
deliver competitive advantage, rather than to satisfy the demands
of regulators.
Freeform Dynamics interviewed 100 financial services IT
directors in the UK.