Information governance: what you really need to know

Information governance ensures that the right information is in the right place in the right situation. It is therefore of great to very great importance to more than one in two IT and business managers in German-speaking countries. And its value for banks will certainly increase in view of the current challenges.

One reason why the topic is gaining in importance right now is due to the increasing reporting obligations. For example, the European Central Bank recently revised the reporting requirements for asset-backed securities: Structural data on consumer loan ABS, leasing ABS and car loan ABS must be reported at least quarterly at individual loan level from the start of 2014. On the other hand, banks are finding that as data becomes more complex - for example due to more functions or greater internationalization - business success increasingly depends on cumulative, evaluated and interpreted data of high quality.

For the analysts at Gartner, information governance is primarily about clear decision-making powers and an equally clear framework for accountability. Those who have created this basis will be able to evaluate, create, store, use, archive and delete information close to the company's objectives. Similar to IT governance, the construct is based on processes and roles, standards and metrics.

Information that serves the whole

At its core, however, information governance is about one thing: responsibility. Who should take responsibility for information? The IT manager, who will ultimately not delve deep enough into the specialist subject matter? Or the business manager, who ultimately only has his limited specialist area in mind? But action must be taken. Many can already hear the creaking in the woodwork and feel the effects of a lack of information: Information governance plays no role for only 6 percent of the IT and business specialists surveyed by analyst Dr. Martin on behalf of Unisys. The vast majority are aware of the value of this concept. In 80 percent of those surveyed who have already implemented it, IT and specialist departments now work together almost perfectly. Most of them come from large companies, but almost one in four respondents from SMEs stated that their company intends to follow suit and introduce information governance by 2013.

At an organizational level, this means One or more employees who report directly to the management are responsible for information governance - and nothing else beyond that. This is the only way to ensure that they really are consistently pursuing the company's overarching goals and not those of their own business unit. These managers initiate programs to develop specific policies together with the relevant stakeholders, be it for risk management or for consistent, cross-national financial reporting. This also includes metrics that provide information on the success of the programs. For example, the quality of customer data can be measured by comparing it with an external database.

Little data determines success

Not all information deserves the same attention. Business cases help with the evaluation: Which customer (data) promises the most turnover and is therefore more important for information management? Which incomplete or non-aggregated data causes the greatest cross-selling losses? What information do I primarily need to conquer a new market segment?

Anyone who weights information on the basis of company-wide business objectives will ultimately arrive at comparatively few, truly indispensable data elements. They can then concentrate on these. An IT solution that checks entries for probabilities and recognizes duplicates on the one hand, and is based on industry-proven business processes on the other, does much of the work for them. As a rule, the afb Credit Management Solution (afb CMS) "knows" through parameter settings when which data is recorded at the respective bank and in which form it is best stored and exchanged. In addition, the afb CMS includes comprehensive functionality with which the potential and risks of partners and end customers in the credit and leasing business can be sounded out using the centrally collected data.