Financial data mining valued above other tech

A recent CIO Canada roundtable sought to discover what tech areas bank CIOs value in the changing and evolving IT landscape. The answer, overwhelmingly, was big data analytics. While the value behind social media or the cloud may be difficult for bank presidents to understand or justify, there was wide support for financial data mining as a way forward.

There are a number of prevailing narratives in the expansion of IT. According to CIO Canada, however, big data analytics is the method that stands out in the financial sector. The source found executives using the technology better able to understand their customers and develop their new products and services. Reducing overall costs remains an overarching goal following the adoptions as well.

While IDC Financial Insights analyst Rob Burbach warned that companies will come across financial control and integration issues in their pursuit of the new systems, he conceded that all the players in the industry are "getting their feet wet" with big data.

Bankers and big data have long been seen as a match. The American Bankers Association Banking Journal recently investigated the technology and its likely impact on the market, speaking to industry expert Alan Fish. Fish stated that the automated decisions enabled by unstructured data will likely trump human instinct on questions of customer risk.