What is bank IT compliance?
Compliance regulations affect every business and financial service with banks for example being one of the sectors where the regulations are particularly strict. Banks must keep as up to date as possible with industry regulations and new legislation so their compliance solution should be a priority. As much of our lives are increasingly lived online, whether this is through work or leisure activities such as online shopping and gaming, it is more important than ever for banks to be IT compliant. Read on to find out more about what exactly bank IT compliance is, how to make sure your company meets compliance requirements and how this can benefit customers as much as companies.
What is bank IT compliance
Bank IT compliance simply refers to compliance practices that are IT related. As mentioned, we now spend such a vast amount of our time online and many actions which in the past you may have had to go to the bank to do in person, can now be made automated online. In order to stay compliant with regulations, banks should keep up to date with new laws and practices and pay particular attention to changing technologies and developments which could affect their compliance solutions. For example, banks should offer solutions that make it easier for customers to keep on top of their finances, such as online banking and transferring but the bank should still be careful to adhere to industry standards. Using an external compliance partner may make this process smoother and avoid any costly mistakes being made. Technology continues to develop at such a rapid pace so a compliance partner can help you keep up to date with such changes and not be left behind, IT compliance is also a way for banks to stay ahead of competitors who may not have adopted the latest technology.
What can banks do to improve their IT compliance practices
So where should banks begin when it comes to IT compliance? Automation could be good place to start. Banks can use automation to speed up their own compliance checks and also offer fraud detection to avoid potential problems for their customers so this is a win win for both parties. Banks can embrace IT compliance when it comes to their reporting system. Any business which is compliant should be making regular reports on their financial situation and the use of IT can make this easier for them. Digital Regulatory Reporting or (DRR) allows banks to have a standardised format across all their reporting, making the process more time efficient, manageable and quicker in the event that regulatory deadlines are on the horizon. Again, this is a way to offer more reliability than the competing banks. However, IT compliance does not come without its challenges too. There is increased demand form both regulatory bodies and the general public for cyber security and data protection. As banks look to move more of their compliance and customer data online, they must insure that they have secure secruity systems in place. They should think about only storing essential information to put less pressure on their storage and databases and well as not keeping information about customers which is not necessary.
How does bank IT compliance benefit the customer
A big part of the relationship between banks and their customers is trust. It is therefore only logical that banks should invest a decent amount of time and money into their compliance solutions as such practices are all about trust and reliability. If you have these practices in place, in turn your user experience and service will be better overall for the customer. It is important to carry these IT compliance practice through all areas of the business from customer service to sales and make sure that staff are properly trained in this area. As touched on, automation will be a big trend within IT compliance and these developments should be benefitial for user experience in terms of speed and convenience of actions. For example one of the largest and oldest banks in Europe with 10 million users recently introduced automation and this improved their productivity and customer service levels by a reported 150%. It therefore seems well worth the investment.
It is clear that improving IT compliance can impact the banking industry in a very positive way. As mentioned, the banks themselves can benefit from having up to date software which speeds up their own compliance checks and reduces the risk of human error. This will in turn benefit the customer as technology is put into place to make transactions and money management more secure and easier to access from wherever they are. It is likely that we will see IT compliance being used more and more not just in banking but in many other businesses and industries too.
