The credit crisis and subsequent recession has lead to half of financial services firms increasing their use of complex data analysis, according to research from Accenture.
The vendor, which surveyed over 100 executives at financial services firms in the US, UK and Ireland as part of a wider, 600-strong poll, shows that in the post-crisis environment, analytics has become a top-of-mind imperative but firms remain hindered by technical and organisational barriers.
Over half - 57% - of financial services executives questioned say they see more opportunities to use analytics to help their business than they have resources to do so, a higher proportion than any other sector polled.
Only 49% feel they are in a position to optimise business performance with the information and insights they currently have and more than a third of financial executives say their current technology systems actually hinder their use of enterprise-wide analytics.
While two thirds say their top long-term priority in analytics is to increase their ability to model and predict customer behaviour and decisions, less than a quarter see opportunities in new technologies like social networking and Web 2.0 for this.
Financial executives gave their data relatively high ratings for accuracy and ease-of-use but some of the lowest ratings for completeness and format. Consistency and integration were average compared to other industries. Not surprisingly, more than two thirds say that "getting their data in order" is the top priority for analytics in the near-term.