Within the business there are varying responses to these drivers. Tracking business activity is fundamental, as is monitoring processes for compliance and quality, through internal controls. The retail side often has an emphasis on tracking and monitoring. Marketing has to develop and roll out programmes into a volatile market under scrutiny with performance measured by results. Sales manage leads within a sales cycle, and project teams work towards greater market share. Tracked activities are primary inputs to BI and help decide on how best to deploy IT. All this has to be reviewed within an overall, consistent governance framework. For regulators the need to track what is happening in their area of interest is reliant on deploying IT. The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) collects information about product volumes, such as mortgage, insurance and investment products. This data helps a regulator to be efficient in the way it targets its own resources, identifying potential issues that may require action such as increased supervision of a sector or product type or production of consumer information. Collecting data on mortgages, life policies, general insurance, collective investment schemes and SCARPS might be carried out on a quarterly basis. Crucially, the data is collected elctronically and covers direct sales and those made through an intermediary. Classification includes the type of product sold; whether the sale was advised or non-advised; property and loan value, buyers' status and repayment method.
Intermediaries and all retail firms, such as independent financial advisers and mortgage and insurance brokers, have to supply information about their financial resources, complaints received, training and competence and other matters.
Pricipally this enables a regulator to focus resources on those areas that pose the greatest risk to effective regulation. To do this, it will need the big picture mapped out: a view of who sells what to whom; and the ability to spot potential problems in advance. The message form the FSA was that ‘accurate, timely information will make the FSA a smarter regulator'. While much emphasis is now placed on consumers to manage their own financial affairs, firms and financial sector organisations are now required to be seen to treat their customers fairly. Although different, the three main sectors of financial services - banking, capital markets and insurance - face many similar challenges in this area: they have to meet the demands of an increasingly informed and technology literate customers where satisfaction and service levels will determine customer loyalty; at the same time, they compete in a consolidating market where global institutions and niche businesses differentiate themselves through customer satisfaction.
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are fundamental to the way financial service operations track and monitor their customers, big or small, retail or institutional investor. Many firms that have adapted contact management systems can no longer support the demands of the business or are outpaced by the rest of the company's IT infrastructure. This is often as a result of a number of factors: a shift in emphasis from products to clients, increased competition, the demands of regulation, the need to offer a broader range of products and an increasingly diverse and demanding client portfolio. These lead to the use of technology as a tool to more effectively and proactively manage customer relationships. Within the business there are varying responses to these drivers. The retail side often has an emphasis on tracking and monitoring. Marketing has to develop and roll out programmes into a volatile market under scrutiny with performance measured by results. Sales manage leads within a sales cycle, and project teams work towards greater market share. All this has to be reviewed within an overall, consistent governance framework. Regulation is not only specifically financial, that is, driven by the FSA in the United Kingdom or the SEC in the United States. Other regional and national regulation requires the capability to track and monitor activities.
For example, in the United Kingdom, since 2005 The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI), the Freedom of Information Act (Scotland) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, introduced new laws that gave anyone the right to request information from any public authority including central government, local authorities, NHS services, schools and colleges, courts and police. Data privacy is enshrined in many regulations, generally through data protection legislation. Again, in the United Kingdom, the Freedom of Information legislation extends the right of access to personal data under theData Protection Act 1998, to include and allow access to all types of information held, whether personal or non-personal. This means the capability to make such information available and its use tracked, is fundamental to everyday business activity.
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