The financial sector is highly significant in that it monitors the flow the money in an economy. Entities in this sector deal with many sensitive and important records that need to be stored safely and managed well. The best method of safeguarding paper-based data is by converting it into appropriate digital formats with the help of a reliable provider of document scanning services. Financial organizations are using the best of technological advancements such as automation to achieve efficiency and improve workflow.
Data compiling and management is important for any financial organization including credit unions. Credit unions are formed by various organizations, large corporations, and other entities to provide banking services to their members/employees. These may be small with a few members or large entities with thousands of participants across the country. Created, owned and run by participants, credit unions are not-for-profit enterprises that are tax-exempt. Many credit union executives believe that the public prefer credit unions.
However, a 2017 study showed that although people are often critical of Wall Street and banking, they are happy when it comes to their personal bank. Around 90 percent of people are satisfied with their personal bank and 76 percent feel that their bank has given clear information about the rates and other related details. 87 percent of respondents are happy with their credit card issuers and 81 percent feel that their credit card issuer has given them good information about the rates, fees and risks associated with their card, and 83 percent are happy with their mortgage leader.
From the above study we can understand that credit unions may not be as effective as assumed and there are several areas that credit unions should rectify if they want to compete with other financial service providers. One of the most important areas they should focus on is data management which includes data warehousing, business intelligence, data governance, data quality, advanced analytics, and so on. Other financial institutions like banks have already adopted data warehousing, business intelligence, advanced analytics and data governance that credit unions can learn from.
Credit unions often face the problem of combined silos both in data management as well as operationally. When the data is siloed it affects data management and credit unions are not able to see a complete picture of their members. The insurance and banking sectors are able to analyze their data using business intelligence tools that are fed data from integrated data warehouse.
Many credit union managers and executives look at their business only on a system-by-system basis, putting reports side-by-side to make comparisons instead of having integrated dashboards and reports that allow them to spend time to understand and analyze rather than improvise.
For any organization it may be a daunting task to begin data management. So the first step is to have a clear strategy. It is important to have a strong data and technology strategy, and a business strategy. This helps you to assess the opportunities for value that exist in the data and relate it to strategic business goals. The next step is the actual design and implementation work. Executive sponsorship is important for the success of any budding data management program. The payoffs with better business intelligence and analytics are high, but the costs and risks are too. There must be resource commitments such as subject-matter experts, internal IT staff, licensing of tools and consulting.
Data management helps in analysis that leads to efficiencies. Data management investment provides opportunity for businesses to automate things to bring ultimate efficiency. Credit unions also have the chances to tie together data from multiple vendors and build solutions that let them ask better questions of their data and better compete.
Analysis of member experience is vital to gain access to generational understanding and how changes in member demographics impact the various ways in which people interact. This will enable credit unions to focus on giving members what they are looking for, on their terms. They need to look at how people interact with them, and also ask the right questions to get meaning from the data.
Another element is compliance that every financial institution should have along with growing and changing regulations and reporting requirements. The government wants the organization to have an integrated picture of their member data among other things. To get a better and clear picture, you must have a reliable definition of what a member is across all your systems and it requires an independent integrated data source i.e. a place where you can bring together all the information, define what a member means and report that. Data management is a crucial factor in efficient and effective reporting.
Credit unions are doing well and can do much better if they have advanced analytics and improved data management capabilities. Credit union executives can drive the required transition and secure their credit unions’ future success by using the power of their data assets and dealing with the hard work and risk that comes with growth.
A good data management system should focus on collecting all important data such as external financial data, social and geographical information, enriching the data and finally presenting and acting on data. Data can be used to gain valuable business intelligence that will ensure optimum business growth. Partnering with a reliable data entry company will help ensure good quality, accurate business data. Data entry services will correct defective elements, spelling mistakes and mistyped number values. They use filtering and quality tests to identify duplicate, nonsensical and missing data and standardize and modify data according to the needs of the clients and make it easier to understand. This makes data management in credit unions easier. Clean, categorized and actionable data will enable credit unions to make good on the promises of personal financial management and place themselves on the cutting edge of innovation.
