Accurate and up-to-date customer information and their profiles have always been of prime
importance in the sales room and possibly even more when it comes down client servicing. The client facing aspects of the
financial services industry are in the front line and customer perception of the company is often forged by the ability of
the service supplier to provide accurate and up to date information of the customers account and profile.
The importance of good quality client information to enable a first class service has never
been in greater demand. As the order and execution services of financial services increasingly becomes a commoditised aspect
of the business firms will have to concentrate on what is now called value added but in the future will become known as differentiators.
It has long been the case in the financial services industry that you probably change your
wife before you change your bank, but this view is beginning to change as clients become more demanding and discerning about
what they want from their supplier and who they deal with. How will customers make the choice of service provider in the future,
when most companies will broadly offer the same service at much the same price?
The differential may well come down to the quality of the data made available to the client
facing people in the front line trenches of financial services. It will not just be the accuracy and the quality of data presentation
but the speed to which they are able to access it. Time is very short in the 21st Century and there is an impatience
that is now part of the customers profile and where quality services are expected and with immediacy.
The problems of maintaining customer data are well documented but with no end of a choice
of technologies able to assist the user, the question reduces to what systems are best able to provide connectivity within
the user’s technical environment and the ability of the user to utilise the system most effectively.
Gresham Computing, one of the leaders providing real-time financial solutions, have been
producing supporting systems in the data market for years and are recognised as one of the worlds best software firms in appreciating
the problems of data in financial services and developing an appropriate solution. The trick that Gresham Computing has conjured
up is to produce a system that is not a “just in time” solution, but is able to present quality data where it
is needed within a business.
As many new regulations are sprouting from Brussels that have a client protection objective,
the benefits of Gresham systems are flowering in varying service departments, in many different types of financial services
firm. The obvious gains from Gresham systems can be to either provide information that improves client services or for
management controls and regulatory reporting.
MiFID articles throw enormous emphasis on the client servicing and reporting aspects that
financial services firms need to improve upon. Much of the quality data content can be managed at the account opening stage
where appropriateness and suitability tests can be built into the functionality and business processes. Equally SEPA will
create more data quality requirements within the payments/treasury processes if it is to perform successfully but also so
benefits can be extracted to ultimately enhance the client’s payment/receipt services.
Both these industry changes are heavily reliant on the quality of the data and the ability
to manage and use it, to the benefit of the client. The only difference is one of regulatory and legal and the other more
about creating a single payment landscape with a cheaper and faster, guaranteed movement of funds. Both SEPA and MiFID are
almost sister projects if the dream of a single EU market is to become a reality. Both require the financial services firm
to think more strategically about their data and how they use it for the benefit of their business and customer rewards.
Gresham has built some very good strategic alliances with Cable and Wireless and recently
announced partner Sungard, which appear to suggest a global attack on the data standards and communication problems that have
blighted the global financial markets for years.
There is no doubt that as MiFID and SEPA take affect on the EU and the single market is
created the financial services industry has to work in a real time client servicing environment. This should manifest into
a complete rethink by companies on how they will change their business, away from that of the processing of transactions to
one of emphasis on client services.
The real time management of business will reduce risks in one respect but may open up new
risks where the custody of client data needs to be more secure than it is today. The instances of identity theft seem to grow
daily and the technical capability to operate in real time must not translate itself into a heightened risk of fraud or theft.
That will be like drowning the baby in its own bath water.
By Gary Wright
