Verdande Technology Predicts Regulatory and Economic Pressures to Cause Financial Services Firms to Rely More on Big Data and IT in 2013

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Verdande Technology, a provider of real-time Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) technology, believes that unprecedented regulatory and economic pressures will force financial services firms to rely more on actionable information and technology in order to survive in an increasingly turbulent business climate.

“Facing the triple threat of increased regulatory scrutiny, weak demand and stubborn operating costs, financial institutions will need to adopt novel approaches to succeed”

There is no question that the financial services industry is one of the most technology-advanced business markets. Yet for an industry that is forecasted to spend $393 billion on IT in 2013, it is surprising how often it continues to struggle with IT and service outages and meeting compliance requirements. One of the top priorities for financial services firms this year should be finding new ways to optimize existing IT resources and leverage data to predict and anticipate market volatility, operational risks and potential compliance red flags before they happen.

Jo Kinsella, CEO, financial services at Verdande Technology, has identified some of the biggest IT-related opportunities and challenges for 2013 that financial services organizations must deal with to address catastrophic glitches and complex compliance requirements that could cost millions in damages.

• Finally Turn Data into Value: “Big data” has certainly been the most buzzed-about term this year. While everyone is talking about it, we haven’t seen many financial services firms derive much value from it. As we closed out 2012, the “year of big data theory,” we embark on 2013, the “year of big data in action.” Financial institutions are drowning in data, which, if paired with the right analytics platform, could act as an early warning system for business-compromising events. This year, the industry will be more aggressive in managing and mining its dynamic datasets to help predict problems – especially when faced with escalating costs and shrinking resources.
• Continued Layoffs – Doing More with Less People: While everyone is hopeful that the economy is recovering, the stark reality is that financial services firms will continue to deal with layoffs in 2013. “Doing more with less” has been a tenant for businesses (regardless of industry) for a few years now. But after 2012 saw several high-profile technology “glitches,” which resulted in reputational disasters and significantly impacted those businesses for the worse, organizations are taking the idea of doing more with less much more seriously. With less manpower behind the scenes, firms will have to rely on technology to be their eyes and ears – avoiding disasters before they happen.
• Regulatory Surveillance – Dodd-Frank Takes Hold: A slew of Dodd-Frank deadlines are coming up in 2013 and early 2014 and pressure is mounting within the financial services industry. One deadline to note is around the “stress tests,” which require financial institutions to run annual or biannual scenarios to determine whether they have enough capital to deal with potential catastrophic events. A priority for compliance and risk officers in 2013 will be to consider available technologies that can look at past events to measure the risk of something similar happening in the future – protecting their own organizations and the firms and consumers they work with.
• Intuitive Visualizations – Bringing Information to Life: Next-generation smartphone-type technology needs to be adopted across financial services firms. In the same way people check Facebook and Linkedin on the way into the office, multi-dimensional touch-screen apps should deliver rich content to a phone or tablet so teams are able to check system health wherever and whenever.

“Facing the triple threat of increased regulatory scrutiny, weak demand and stubborn operating costs, financial institutions will need to adopt novel approaches to succeed,” said Adam Sussman, partner and director of research, TABB Group. “Case-based reasoning is an analytical framework that can help transform operational and trade data into a dynamic risk tool kit.”

“The goal for your financial services organization in 2013 should to be to stay off the front page by proactively predicting business problems and working to mitigate them before they happen,” said Kinsella. “This is where CBR comes in. Based on the principle that similar problems have similar solutions, CBR sits on top of existing IT and trading tools and analyzes data patterns in real time. It provides an early warning system so that firms are more likely to see signs of problems before they happen – and this type of insight is invaluable in this fiercely competitive market.”

About Verdande Technology

Verdande Technology AS was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Trondheim, Norway, with regional offices in New York, Houston and Abu Dhabi, UAE. The company is privately funded.

Verdande Technology is the first provider of real-time Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) technology for financial services organizations. The company’s Edge platform – based on the principle that similar problems have similar solutions – identifies, captures and analyzes data patterns in real time, using past events to proactively predict future problems, rapidly diagnose and correct issues and continuously discover new potentially impacting events. Verdande Technology enables firms to make smarter decisions with their massive amounts of data, empowering them with a searchable case library that gives them the foresight to mitigate regulatory risk, uncover trading opportunities and increase performance. Learn more about Verdande Technology at www.verdandetechnology.com.