Established banks face growing competition from Internet-only banks, retailers and other nontraditional players. Insurance companies are undertaking the overhaul of core operational systems for policy administration, claims processing and commissions. Capital markets firms are operating amidst massive disintermediation of services and the simultaneous commoditization and specialization of investment products. How will financial services firms transform their organizations and operations in the coming years to address these trends and challenges?

At Solution Zone, Inc, we see the emergence of seven key themes across the financial services landscape:

• Enterprise risk and compliance — Institutions must prioritize and integrate compliance and risk initiatives to lower the compliance burden and increase enterprise value.
• Data management — Dramatic growth has created more complex global financial institutions, many of which are supported by fragmented organizations, processes, technologies and applications. Facing increased regulation requirements and greater customer demands, institutions need to exert tighter control over data accuracy.
• Business process management — Customers routinely go online to manage their finances, while institutions increasingly rely on technology to strengthen customer relationships, and run their businesses more efficiently. Organizations must institutionalize and automate business processes using key technologies such as workflow, portals and imaging.
• Service-oriented architecture (SOA) — Firms are investigating SOA to standardize their technology portfolios, increase agility and integrate application functionality across different technologies.
• Information convergence —Institutions can attain cost benefits by integrating risk, finance, customer and compliance information. We believe technology initiatives will be focused on improving rigid data warehouse architectures with new search tools, and that SOA will play a key role.
• Customer analytics/business intelligence — Business intelligence and analytics solutions help improve capital allocation by consolidating, analyzing and reporting on risk information. These solutions also provide metrics and performance indicators to better monitor how the institution is performing
• Security — The ever-increasing reach of information technology requires the effective protection and management of digital information to preserve its integrity and comply with privacy regulations.

Solution Zone, Inc professionals are eager to help your organization take on any of these challenges. Contact Us