4 Key Findings from MarkLogic-Sponsored CDO Study

While the position of the Chief Data Officer (CDO) has been around for many years in financial organizations, the CDO’s role continues to grow and evolve. To understand how it is evolving, we recently co-sponsored a survey with the Financial Information Management Association WBR Insights.

In this post, you will find information about the survey, a summary of key findings, and how MarkLogic helps data teams at leading financial organizations improve outcomes with simplified data integration.

About the Survey

The report provides benchmarking information about how CDOs are faring in a rapidly shifting regulatory landscape, and it explores CDOs’ and other data professionals’ perspectives on how their roles are evolving from compliance-oriented to delivering data capabilities to drive business objectives.

Survey participants were from a mix of financial organizations, including asset management firms, hedge funds, insurance companies, and investment banks, with most of the respondents (90%) representing the highest-ranking member of their organization’s data or analytics practice.

Four Key Findings

Overall, the survey shows that while many CDOs are already pursuing an analytics-driven business strategy through an “offensive” approach to data management, there is still more work required on “defensive” data management and automating compliance functions.

• Room for improvement in data modernization

While the majority of respondents believe they are “pulling ahead” of the competition (53%), more than one in three (37%) believe that they have room to improve data modernization in their organizations. Companies relying on legacy data management infrastructure and practices must invest to improve data operations in order to leverage compliance data for new business value.

• High levels of manual compliance activities persist

According to the study, 88% of organizations devote 40% or more of their data practice’s operating budget to compliance activities. The reason compliance is still relatively expensive for financial organizations is the fact that many compliance activities still must be completed by hand—95% of the respondents to the study claim that 40% or more of their regulatory compliance efforts are performed manually. Addressing these manual data processes will require financial organizations to deploy new data intelligence solutions.

• Financial organizations spend the greatest amount of resources on KYC compliance requirements

While 70% of CDOs say risk data aggregation is the primary regulatory concern within their IT departments, 69% say “Know Your Customer” (KYC) is their primary area of resource consumption. Customer intelligence is not only critical for regulatory requirements like KYC and AML, but having a 360-degree view of your customers for analytical purposes is foundational for improving onboarding and ongoing engagement across the back, middle, and front offices.

• Lack of data provenance and lineage impeding shift to offensive data management strategy

The two most significant challenges cited by the respondents are a lack of downstream visibility into data consumption (69%) and unclear data provenance and tagging information (65%). Although financial organizations are making headway when it comes to managing data internally, they still struggle with tracing and auditing their data. The use of data integration tools for effective metadata management can help financial organizations overcome these impediments through improved data governance and usability.

The MarkLogic Solution

In an increasingly complex marketplace, MarkLogic’s data intelligence platform gives financial services organizations the ability to adapt to changing business needs, navigating the regulatory maze and improving customer experiences.

Our innovative technology integrates your data silos with minimal disruption, providing support for secure operations, accurate reporting, and analysis over the full lifecycle of data. The result? Greater transparency and agility for your business, in real-time.

MarkLogic is being used by leading financial services organizations to facilitate the operationalization of data across the business for faster insights and more effective compliance. To learn how, please visit our Financial Services industry solutions site.

To download a copy of the report, please click on the image below: