Financial institutions have often relied on excel spreadsheets for their data analytics. This is leaving many firms with a legacy system that is not effective in the increasingly complex financial market.
This insight came from a recent webinar hosted by Kidbrooke, a WealthTech platform that offers unified analytics for financial decision making within investment and wealth management. The webinar, titled ‘From spreadsheets to success: transforming financial analytics with KidbrookeONE’, was chaired by Zaliia Gindullina, Head of Business Development at Kidbrooke, and joined by Fredrik Davéus, CEO of Kidbrooke. During the discussion, Davéus offered insights on the transition from conventional Excel-based analytics to unified analytical platforms within the financial industry.
One of the questions posed to Davéus was around the major challenges financial services firms face with their data analytics.
One of the core challenges that firms experience, Davéus said, is that new regulatory requirements are often extremely complex and can even be abstract. When regulations are created it can be difficult to ascertain the exact requirements and picture what the solution would be, both in terms of the analytics, and what calculations and data would be needed.
“This means that subject matter experts, actuaries, risk managers and compliance people, need to iterate and to find the solution they need to build small proof-of-concepts over and over,” he said. As a result, firms often find a solution and then they move on to the next priority, leaving a series of solutions in their wake that are ok, but not perfect.
He continued by stating that firms need that initial flexibility and the proof-of-concept iterations to find the solution and properly understand the requirements, whether that is a business requirement, a new product, if it will be risk managed or something else. “Once you have those tools you kind of need to pause and think about the realisation of these things because what often happens is these subject matter expert tools live for a duration of years and years, because you were never able to move on from that stage and industrialise. You buy systems for some parts of the process, but often there are bits and pieces that get left behind.”
In the following years after the launch of the regulation, parameters are going to change. For instance, there might be an update to the regulation that requires changes to the process, or the business requirement could change. This is why firms need to be able to industrialise their data analytics processes into a more robust system, but they still need to maintain a level of flexibility so they can adapt to change.
The full webinar explores the lifecycle of analytical needs within financial institutions, including the importance of Excel-based solutions, as well as the risks they pose due to operational vulnerabilities, critical person dependence and inherent spreadsheet limitations. Additionally, the webinar explains how the KidbrookeONE analytical platform can improve financial data management and analysis processes.
Watch the full webinar here.
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