Banks Need Transaction-Level Insight Into Mainframe Systems to Meet New Transparency Demands

Recently I participated in the first installment of a webinar series  hosted by Bank Systems and Technology. I was joined by Greg MacSweeney of Bank Systems & Technology and analyst Gareth Lodge of Celent, and we discussed the need for banks to have transaction-level insight into mainframe systems to meet customer, partner and internal demands.

We are living in an increasingly complex world, especially in the financial services space where regulations continue to tighten. Banks must increase analysis to meet this heightened demand for reporting and compliance, and to do this we need real-time access and visibility into all transactional data. As Gareth said during our discussion, “Mark Twain said we can count on two things in life, death and taxes, and now we have a third: regulation.”

In addition to meeting these new requirements, customers are increasingly expecting immediate and detailed response and communication from their bank. However, this type of service requires access to transactional-level data in real-time. This is a multi step process and is not automated, so how do we get it done in a timely matter for the customer especially when this data is hard to find and difficult to interpret?

Many banks still maintain complex system architectures comprised of old and new mainframes- many of which are very difficult to access and navigate. It’s like operating in the dark, where there is very little transparency, creating frustration for IT departments.

In the future, we hope to see banks address some of these challenges with new technology. In order to meet new regulatory demands, banks need access to transactional level data, which will improve responsiveness and ultimately customer service. However, finding transactional level data on the mainframe and being able to act upon it poses quite a challenge from a business and operational perspective.

So how do we do that? Stay tuned for my next post, highlighting second installment of our webinar series. I welcome your comments here, as well.