Financial Institution Advantage and the Optimization of Information Processing

Chapter 10Conclusions

We have sought to explain that the main challenges facing financial institutions today relate to their current and future capabilities with respect to information processing and information management. We have discussed, using some practical definitions, how information is created through data processing and analytics and how it has become more and more heavily driven by statistical models, data mining, and data analytic tools—and in so doing, have drawn a connection between competitively advantaged business decision making and excellence in data management and advanced analytics. We saw how rapidly changing technologies in pricing, asset selection and management, risk management, and regulatory requirements (including CCAR, AML, CIP, and others) have increased institutions' dependencies on broader and increasingly sophisticated suites of models that require higher and higher volumes of processed data to operate. We have described the core capabilities underlying the broader objective: designing and maintaining a core data infrastructure with a high degree of integration to support the twin goals of storing vastly higher amounts of data without loss of performance in data accessibility, and being able to support the widest possible and most dynamic layer of analytic tools (modeling, analyzing, and reporting software). We have highlighted the importance of data acquisition as a function that needs to combine the firm's strategic vision with strong tactical ...