Only 23% of European banks can easily access information
on their customers' transactions according to a survey by the
European Financial Management and Marketing Association and the
University of Mannheim.
The survey of 125 retail banks in Europe and the Middle East
revealed how much banks still have to do in order to utilise
meaningful and timely business intelligence.
It also highlighted how little progress has been made in
unravelling and updating complex legacy infrastructures, the
report's authors said.
Another key finding was that just 11% of respondents had a
regular and consistent data mining process in place. However, the
vast majority were aware of the competitive advantage such
processes could bring, and 88% of them wanted to develop this
capability in the next three years.
The report suggested that banks' historic reliance on developing
systems in-house should be seen less as a competitive
differentiator and more of a potential disadvantage resulting in
less flexibility and higher maintenance costs.
Most banks run a mixed environment consisting mostly of in-house
systems and some off-the-shelf software, but as the benefits of
standardisation become more widely accepted, the balance is
expected to shift, to the extent that within three years 40% plan
to be using predominantly standard software, and 9% expect to rely
on it exclusively.