Data is the new currency. It is critical that financial institutions can trust their data and make good decisions. That should resonate with all of us in the industry - financial institutions need to consider their huge impact and their responsibility to society as a whole and remain uncompromising when it comes to their data.

From my perspective in the financial services sector, I strongly believe that firms need to centralize their global data footprint to strengthen client services and regulatory reporting.

Fragmented customer and reference data across regions continues to pose a challenge to financial firms, a more critical issue than ever before, as they must also carefully manage client relationships and meet ever-evolving regulatory compliance reporting. Unifying data sources can create a trusted, 360-degree view of the business. Efficient master data management (MDM) infrastructure can eliminate inconsistent, incomplete, and unreliable data and keep pace with increased scrutiny and advanced analytics and AI needs, such as customer insights, risk assessment, and market forecasts. 

There’s an industry-wide push to rationalize data estates and simplify data systems. When dealing with disparate data over multiple systems, it’s imperative to make sure the underlying data gives the same client information to relationship managers as it does to regulators.

Informatica’s Customer 360 can build a “golden record” for individual clients in the financial services sector, while the CLAIRE® AI-powered engine and metadata streamlines compliance and creates growth opportunities. 

To support the customer data journey, I staunchly believe more firms across the financial services sector can immediately benefit from flexible, cloud-native technology partnerships which deliver fast time-to-value. I’ve personally overseen the integration of Informatica’s Customer 360 SaaS with its native low/no-code tools for data integration, quality, and governance, and MDM implementation. I’ve seen it delivering results within just a few weeks.  

Such speed and simplicity can be a game-changer, allowing for quickly standardized data quality rules and the establishment of a ‘golden record.’ Rather than hunting for valid data, business teams can quickly understand in a single view which data is correct, matched and linked properly. 

My thinking is in-line with other leaders in the industry, I believe it is critical for organizations to bring together multiple data systems, including external sources, to get a clear sense of an organization's global client footprint. Having a single reference point, as data assets are integrated, is critical, ensuring uniformity across systems. 

Having managed extensive MDM deployments across a range of organizations, Informatica’s cloud-based implementation has been the smoothest and fastest in my career.

If you’re considering how to improve your approach, do not overlook the need for robust metadata capabilities. This is key to ensure that data is protected and secure, compliant with global privacy and secrecy rules and used ethically across future AI solutions.

Embedded in Customer 360 is Informatica’s CLAIRE^®, an AI-powered engine that drives up to 100x productivity gains for many data management processes.  Of particular note for the financial services industry, Informatica CLAIRE® capabilities around accurate multidomain record-matching and inferred data lineage, help support the granular hierarchy of global customer data, including cross-functional details on how clients relate to each other and other data assets such as payments or networks.  

CLAIRE-driven insights help account teams quickly identify new growth opportunities; that could be a cross- or up-sell of an existing client, or an unbanked subsidiary overseas.

CLAIRE^® AI helps traverse data sets and quickly understand more data sources. This means that it is possible to identify real growth opportunities within a bank and share that information at a prospecting level with the front office.

In addition to increasing internal efficiency, improving your data architecture can enhance collaboration with external partners. Centralizing client data allows you streamline your enterprise’s adherence to evolving regulatory frameworks, including Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations, as well as national and regional data protection laws.

For example, your ESG data may between the Americas, the European Union and the UK. It is now possible to create ‘keys’ to access data within the MDM solution, linking it to Bloomberg, Moody’s, Dun & Bradstreet, or the London Stock Exchange Group. This means business teams are free to access the best data sets and more effectively support their purpose.

Naturally, global enterprises want to onboard external market intelligence specialists swiftly. For example, financial services organizations can use a sentiment-based analysis provider to anticipate any downturns in a particular company or sector. With the flexibility, scale and speed of a cloud-native MDM solution, banks can integrate external reports and build those early warning systems with as much headway as possible. In my view, there is always more external data from specialists which could be leveraged. With Informatica, I believe it is possible to spend less time managing data collection or quality checks, and more time applying those data assets to new use cases.

As I contemplate future MDM expansion, I am exploring how Informatica’s Product 360 could improve the way financial institutions build, develop and configure sophisticated bank products, including streamlining data reviews and workflows for legal, credit, compliance and ESG. Data marketplace infrastructure and security and control frameworks need to be in place to safely and effectively understand and democratize data.  

While I remain cautious due to regulatory considerations which are of course mandatory across the industry, I believe it is now the right time for the industry to explore initial AI use cases, from machine learning and transaction monitoring to building in-house predictive sentiment trends. A successful journey to the cloud lays the foundation for such future innovation.

The AI tools within Informatica help all of us examine our data environment and identify problems in profiling or quality, so we can build that foundation for our own AI when the time is right. 

As the financial world increasingly runs on data which is stored in clouds – not money in vaults – I believes a partnership with Informatica can prove to be a key differentiator. I certainly anticipate more firms discovering the benefits of a unified view of global client data and flexible, AI-powered data platforms, allowing them streamline their global growth and compliance faster than ever.   

To learn more about the advantages Informatica brings to banking and financial services, visit informatica.com/financial-services.