The Benefits of Making Risk and Compliance Data Accessible for Analytics

Businesses want their risk and compliance frameworks to be more capable of providing them with business intelligence that is useful for executive decision-makers. The problem is that the current state of risk and compliance data is so disparate that analyzing the data continuously can be an unsustainable process for many businesses. As important as it is to ensure that data is analyzed properly, it is even more important to first ensure that the data is conveniently available for the experts who will analyze it. Data accessibility is the foundation of data analytics – it is the necessary first step businesses need to take to enable enhanced risk and compliance functions.

The Current State of Risk and Compliance Data

Businesses that do not use a digital platform to monitor and manage risk and compliance store all the data required in various places and different formats. A lot of risk data is spread out across spreadsheets used to calculate risks, similarly, a lot of compliance information is present in reports and documents that are used to assess compliance performance. Financial organizations already have all the data they need for predictive analytics; the problem is that the data first needs to be made ready for analysis.

If management wants risks and compliance metrics it can simply ask the risk and compliance experts to provide it. The experts will then comb through all the reports, documents, spreadsheets, and other files to get the data they need to perform analytics. This process needs to be repeated every time as new query has to be made; if management wants metrics every month, then each month the experts must first locate and then standardize data from the previous month.

This adds a lot of labor hours to the process. The time of risk and compliance experts is incredibly significant for the organizations under normal circumstances and this situation is exacerbated by the current turbulent market conditions. The global economic system is recovering from the pandemic; risk and compliance departments across the world are doing their best to allow businesses to return to normal as quickly as possible while fulfilling all risk and compliance requirements. They cannot be repeatedly asked to leave their critical tasks to spend hours gathering data to provide insights to management. What businesses need to do instead is focus on making data analytics so easy that they can be automated.

Risk and compliance data can help businesses understand their own leverage and exposure better and make better executive decisions about the growth strategy of the organization. Click To Tweet

Bringing the Data Together

A lot has been written and said about how risk and compliance management solutions can make it easier for businesses to streamline workflows and monitor risk and compliance performance. What these platforms do with risk and compliance data, however, is much more profound and responsible for making all the talked-about functions possible. Modern risk and compliance solutions can offer businesses new capabilities and enhanced predictive analytics because they focus on data integration.

These risk and compliance management solutions provide a platform where the risk and compliance experts can store all their documents, spreadsheets, and more. The solutions also provide a similar platform to any other employee providing risk and compliance data to the experts. Questionnaires are replaced with forms that can submit information directly into the platform as well. This means that all the required compliance and risk data is already present in one place from the beginning. The risk and compliance experts do not need to locate any of the data; they can instead work with real-time data as it is entered into the system. This means that instead of spending hours to generate risk and compliance performance every time it is required by management, they can provide management with a real-time view of risk and compliance metrics.

Making data available to risk and compliance professionals in just a few clicks also gives them the freedom to generate insights through in-depth analytics. Since all the required data is accessible, risk and compliance experts can slice and dice through data to understand trends and detect emerging risks through patterns in the compliance data. There is no barrier between the risk and compliance information anymore – both are present under the same platform, and both have metrics that depend on each other.

Data is widely regarded as the most important asset that businesses can have in this era. Risk and compliance data can help businesses understand their own leverage and exposure better and make better executive decisions about the growth strategy of the organization. Modern risk and compliance management platforms are now aimed at enhancing not just the risk and compliance related functional roles within the organization but also with empowering the board and management with real-time performance data and monitoring.

Interested in seeing how your organization can benefit from modern risk and compliance technology? Get in touch with our experts to see a demonstration of Predict360, the ABA (American Bankers Association) endorsed risk and compliance management platform.