When I’m asked how risk and financial data can become an asset, I find it easiest to put this into financial terms: Once you have data assets. You can value them.

It makes sense that as data becomes more useful, it becomes more valuable. Consolidating control into a single view of actionable data can help businesses handle both risk and business management. This provides business intelligence which provides great value.

Now, organisations can view the same data differently, depending on the levels of detail needed. Different angles of interpretation are also important. When you run your core data set in real time, under a single regime it can be used in multiple ways.

This can be a starting point for overcoming problems as well as creating new opportunities.

It can:

• underpin understanding of financial crime, operational risk and credit risk.
• enable well-managed governance, risk and compliance to guard against exposure to money laundering, internal or external fraud and weakness in risk controls.
• scale without creating duplication or inefficiency.
• provide customer insight.

The better this data set is, the less need there is for added precautions such as collateral buffers, saving even more money and adding even more value.

Business continuity is also highly valuable when we speak about productivity and customer confidence. Crucially, by virtualising and consolidating applications and simplifying structures, we can achieve this technology without any disruption to the back office.