Top 5 IT Challenges in the Finance Industry
Much like any other sector, technology forms the backbone of the finance industry. After all, technology has allowed the finance sector to be faster, more reliable, and more convenient. With this, however, comes a multitude of different challenges that your organisation could face. The best way to face these challenges is to know what they are and how to prepare for them, to ensure that you have everything tight enough to avoid catastrophe — and that you can recover well in the face of one.
In this article, we’re going to go over the top five IT challenges that your organisation will come up against in the finance sector, as well as briefly examining how you can take steps to solve these challenges.
Challenge 1: Cybersecurity
When dealing with important data, cybersecurity becomes a vital element of your organisation. This is especially important for financial institutions — after all, having your client’s money or financials stolen could be hugely damaging for your organisation. This is why — for financial institutions — cybersecurity is the most important thing that you need to ensure is a top priority. Financial institutions can’t afford for anything to go wrong here, as they’re handling others’ money. Especially with the threat of a cyberattack being more realistic than ever, your organisation's approach to security is crucial to ensuring that data or even money doesn't end up in the hands of an attacker. All in all, good cybersecurity practices are the best way to solve this — a high level of attention to threats as well as good cybersecurity education throughout your organisation is essential, as it's not something you can just leave to chance. Ensuring that the right procedures are in place and are being followed is vital. Due to the huge amount of reliance on financial institutions, any downtime could be catastrophic — let alone theft of data and, at worst, finances.
Is the finance industry high up on the target list for cybercriminals? Find out in the latest cyber threat report from SonicWall
Challenge 2: Data Management
As a financial institution, you'll naturally have a lot of data that needs to be handled and managed in a manner that makes it easy to find what you need — when you need it. This is vital — financial institutions run on data completely and use them to make key decisions, as well as to keep track of those within the organisation. Without ensuring that the data is organised sufficiently to keep it easy to access and build upon, costs will accrue as you'll have to buy duplicate data sets to make up for any inconsistencies from bad organisation. Ensuring that this is futureproofed too means that you will avoid problems in the future, essentially letting you have peace of mind that you'll have the data that you need to make key decisions without difficulty.
Challenge 3: Regulatory Compliance
As with any institution, there are regulatory systems in place to ensure that your organisation isn't slacking on certain aspects of IT within your organisation. As a financial institution, abiding by these regulations is vital — it helps build trust that you can be trusted with clients' money. There are a lot of different financial regulations that financial institutions need to abide by. These regulations need to be followed otherwise risking a massive loss of trust, penalties, and even the ability to be seen as a financial institution. Ensuring that you remain compliant with the regulations is the solution here — which means reading the documents and understanding what you need to do to be compliant.
Challenge 4: Legacy Systems
Every system eventually becomes old. Whether newer versions are available or a tool simply just isn't supported any more, legacy systems are very common. After all, if a system works, then there's no point in replacing it. However, while legacy systems may work at first, there's a multitude of different problems that mean that they need to be phased out and replaced. Firstly, older systems simply aren't built for the modern world, meaning that there are possible oversights regarding security and efficiency that simply weren't considerations in the past. Failing to upgrade could cause lots of issues down the line. The other major issue is compatibility — older, legacy systems are less built to work with other systems, meaning that you'll ultimately be less flexible to implement whatever you need within your organisation. In essential terms, replacing these legacy systems will ensure far fewer problems down the road.
Challenge 5: Talent Shortage
The whole IT industry is facing a massive skills shortage currently. Due to the sheer amount of technical knowledge needed to be an IT expert, there is a sizeable discrepancy between the IT personnel available and the IT personnel required. Because of this, hiring IT personnel for your organisation can be expensive. After all, due to supply and demand, it’s quite expensive to hire good IT talent for your organisation. However, it can be still just as difficult to find the right person for your business. One of the best ways to deal with this is to partner with a managed service provider, as they will have a team of experts right at your fingertips at any given moment. With this, you’ll never need to worry about hiring IT experts and can easily ensure that you have an infrastructure in place to help with IT when required.
How ACS Can Help
IT is a vital part of the financial sector, and these challenges are just some of the ways that organisations within the financial field are struggling to face if not prepared. These challenges are only some of the ways that organisations in the financial sector are struggling — but are the main things to keep an eye out for. Preparation is a key aspect of preparing for anything — and this goes for integrating IT solutions into your organisation, as you want to be more proactive than reactive.
If you’re looking to get started with an MSP to help deal with these issues, reach out to us today. Our experts are here to help and will ensure that your organisation is well-equipped to deal with any future challenges and issues. Get in touch with us now and see how our team can help you.
