November 28, 2017 – Creating an integrated and consistent view of data across the business is the main challenge global banks are currently facing across EMEA, APAC and North America. That’s according to a new survey, released by Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting business that reveals approximately 90% of banks point to having major concerns about data management in today’s constantly evolving regulatory landscape.

The survey, which is designed to analyze how banks are optimizing data strategies to achieve regulatory compliance, found that only 10% of respondents stated that they were neutral on data management concerns, and nobody reported “no concerns.” The survey, conducted in association with Risk.Net, also reveals that 60% of bank respondents cite achieving data requirements as the main regulatory compliance challenge. Other main challenges include regulatory reporting (approximately 20%) and complex real-time analysis (also approximately 20%). Risk.net, published by Infopro Digital, is a leading source of global news and analysis on risk management, derivatives and financial regulatory developments.

Worryingly, just 17% of respondents claimed to have the right systems and procedures in place to support their regulatory compliance efforts. The remaining 83% said that were planning to work on achieving suitably robust systems and procedures in light of mounting global regulatory challenges.

While approximately 42% of respondents cited creating an integrated and consistent view of data across the business as their main challenge, just 3% cited the disruption of FinTech start-ups as a concern. Other noted challenges were keeping up-to-date with the pace of regulatory change (19%), keeping to respective regulatory deadlines (20%) and providing more detailed and granular data to the regulator and senior management (16%).

Tellingly, almost 70% of respondents suggested they have grievances with multiple legacy products comprising multiple technologies and inflexible technology support.

When it comes to detailing which regulatory initiatives will have the most resources devoted to them in 2018, there was a clear winner in the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 9 and 16 and the Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) standard. Almost half of respondents cited these upcoming financial standards as having pride of place for IT resourcing. Other notable projects include technology implementations around the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) (12%), Liquidity Risk Reporting (9%), AnaCredit (6%) and Interest Rate Risk in the Banking Book (IRRBB) (3%). The remaining 20% said they plan to devote most resources to local regulatory changes.

In the past few months leading financial services firms from across the world have implemented Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX solution for Regulatory Reporting, Risk and Finance (including IFRS 9 solutions). Major financial services providers that have publicly announced their use of Wolters Kluwer in the past year include Nordea, BBVA, CIBC, Equitable Bank, LGT, Australia’s Queensland Treasury Corporation and The Swedish Export Credit Corporation.

“Global and local regulators are demanding ever-greater integration across business processes, more invasive and broader scope in management and reporting, and faster reaction to change of regulations. The survey findings demonstrate that banks are fully aware of the data challenges and now need to put plans in place to ensure their systems are up to the task,” comments Rajat Somany, Global Head of Strategy, Product and Platform Management for Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Reporting business. “Our OneSumX solution suite for Finance, Risk and Regulatory Reporting offers integrated regulatory compliance and reporting solutions for managing these ever more complex obligations.”