A number of financial services companies still have no one in charge of data compliance strategies or have entrusted them to the wrong teams, research has found.
The survey of IT decision makers at large financial services companies revealed a degree of confusion in the industry over data handling. Eighteen percent of respondents said they either didn't check potential customers against criminal lists, or didn't know whether such checks took place even though existing regulation requires it.
The survey by research company BDRC and data integration company Dataflux also found 16 percent said no one in their organization had a specific responsibility for making data processes transparent and auditable in line with current financial services regulations.
In addition, 36 percent said responsibility of data quality was given to the IT department--a wrong move, according to BDRC and Dataflux. The research says data quality, in terms of where information resides and who has access to it, is critical to business strategy and so should be championed by business managers in the organization.
Mark Long, business proposition manager at BDRC, said: "How can you know who you are lending to if you don't have a single view of the customer within the organization? Developing new products is going to be problematic without the sort of customer segmentation that you can only get with high quality data on your customers."
Nonetheless, 89 percent of respondents said data was a strategic asset to their company.
Julian Goldsmith of Silicon.com reported from London.
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