By Business & Finance 
Agile, born-in-the-cloud market entrants are eroding traditional bank customer bases and creating levels of competition previously unseen in the sector.
Partner content from Diligent.
Financial services institutions are under pressure from all sides, and the challenges keep coming. In the personal banking sphere, the pace of innovation is rapid and accelerating. A new generation of digital- and mobile-native customers expects anytime, anywhere banking services in the palm of their hands. They expect their bank to leverage open banking data to create exceptionally seamless customer experiences. At the same time, banking brand loyalty is not the force it once was. Agile, born-in-the-cloud market entrants are eroding traditional bank customer bases and creating levels of competition previously unseen in the sector.
In the commercial sector, economic turbulence and geopolitical uncertainty are creating tough conditions, but innovation is still essential. The emergence of solutions such as banking-as-a-service and the provision of fully managed banking solutions to non-bank third parties are just some of the routes being explored to diversify and build resilience.
Fostering a climate of trust
Amid all these often-competing pressures and uncertainty, financial services institutions remain acutely aware that the industry fundamentally relies on trust. When stakeholders lose confidence in the financial system, and the companies within it, the economic and social consequences are severe.
As a result, governments, regulators, and exchanges worldwide are ramping up scrutiny, introducing reporting regulations and guidance across a swathe of different areas designed to improve transparency, accountability, and accuracy. ESG, cyber risk and resilience, anti-money laundering and sanctions, and consumer protection and inclusion are all key areas of focus for financial services institutions and their stakeholders.
Ultimately, however, if trust is the desired outcome, ensuring that the business has a robust, effective modern governance, risk, and compliance programme is the route to achieving it. When boards and senior leaders have accurate, real-time information about the GRC position of their organisation, they are better able to see over the horizon to spot emerging risks to resilience, reputation, and performance. Crucially, they are also better able to report on key metrics – both financial and non-financial – to illustrate the current status of the company and demonstrate how it arrived at this position, providing evidenced predictions on future performance.
In turn, accurate, transparent reporting supported by robust evidence helps to foster the climate of trust that encourages stakeholders to engage positively with the business. This all contributes to long-term resilience and the agility to navigate uncertainty.
Achieving clarity and confidence
However, achieving clarity and confidence around GRC is no easy task. The sheer variety, scale, and scope of topics that fall under the GRC umbrella create immense complexity. This is compounded by the fact that the different areas are often siloed, meaning gaps and interdependencies can be hard to spot. Data collection can be piecemeal and incomplete, providing governance, risk, and compliance teams with a major headache when it comes to collating and analysing it all.
Furthermore, more data is not always better. Simply being deluged by information does not provide the insight directors, executives, and broader stakeholders need to make confident, informed decisions at the pace required.
Diligent is acutely aware of the challenges our financial services customers are seeking to solve. Our GRC platform is designed to deliver rapid, actionable insight from the data contained both within and beyond your business. It streamlines data collection, analysis and reporting in a single platform that delivers a full picture of your governance, risk, and compliance position. This puts you in a strong position to manage the challenges of regulations, reporting, and reputation management to continue building stakeholder trust over the long term.
Learn more about how Diligent can help you build trust for your business.
