We’ve been doing quite a bit of work lately around the FSA’s Retail Distribution Review (RDR) and yesterday published a survey (click here for further details) that was undertaken by the major technology vendors and their readiness/willingness to adapt their solutions to the potential new business environment.
What is interesting is the way in which technology is becoming an integral part of the way in which the Regulator is operating the market. Take the Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) regulations, for example – a great deal of the provisions set out by the FSA revolve around the provision of Management Information (MI) – good, heavy-duty, robust MI. The FSA characterises a successful business as one that has MI engrained within their culture and from that best practice and control can be exerted over the operation of the enterprise.
Unsurprisngly, if you want good MI you need a good technology solution. The majority of vendors we surveyed in our RDR report offer in-depth MI coupled with the ability to generate the requisite forms of data to assist in the TCF requirements – also, some provided fixed MI output that enables other FSA outputs, such as Regulatory Reporting, eg RMAR or Customer Complaints.
Some larger enterprises might also be looking at developing a more bespoke Business Intelligence architecture – late last year, Microsoft launched a server-based suite of applications that enables a high degree of integration and reporting of disparate data sources. It is built on top of their SharePoint Server and SQL Server 2005 solutions and is called Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. Tools of this type are able to process a wide range of data from all parts of the organisation and create management dashboards, scorecards and alike to assist in the management of a company.
What is clear is that good automation of MI means less pain in terms of fulfilling regulatory obligations.
