Monitoring databases is a challenge for Financial Services

By Puja Sharma

Even though digital transformation is going ahead at full speed, these efforts tend to be incremental, localised, and fragmented, resulting in a pervasive and pernicious ‘technology trap.’ This is preventing many banks from realizing the full potential of their investments.”

Sector analysis of the results from a major database monitoring survey has revealed how and why the growth, complexity, and management of database estates in Financial Services are different from other industry sectors. The results clarify the area’s businesses in the sector should consider when including their database estates in digital transformation initiatives.

The global monitoring survey of 2,500 IT professionals and C-level executives was undertaken by Redgate in 2021 to discover the scenarios and challenges organizations face when monitoring their database estates. A large number of responses also provided the opportunity to dig a little deeper and compare the similarities and differences across industry sectors.

The insights are even more pertinent, given the recent big increase in investment in the sector. KPMG’s January 2022 Pulse of FinTech report revealed global investment in the FinTech market topping $210 billion in 2021, a 173% increase in investment activity over 2020. Notable, one of its four trends to watch out for in 2022 is an increasing focus on the modernisation of core banking platforms to reduce the reliance on legacy infrastructures and facilitate better customer experiences.

While the investment is there, and there is a willingness and an urge to upgrade IT systems and processes, issues remain. As Deloitte’s 2022 Banking and Capital Markets Outlook report observe: “Even though digital transformation is going ahead at full speed, these efforts tend to be incremental, localized, and fragmented, resulting in a pervasive and pernicious ‘technology trap.’ This is preventing many banks from realizing the full potential of their investments.”

According to a Deloitte survey of banking executives across nine major markets, 88% expect top-line revenue to increase in 2022. It may also be possible to improve the efficiency ratio by focusing more on cost management. As a result, banks are expected to increase the divide by buyback shares to accelerate capital distribution plans. The survey found that three-quarters of respondents expected dividends to increase next year.

Hence the value of the Redgate insights reports in giving businesses in the sector a deeper understanding of the issues and the challenges they face when monitoring their database estates. By providing a benchmark of results businesses can use to compare their efforts against those of their peers, future investment in their database estates can be directed more wisely.

Financial Services in particular emerged as an outlier in the published sector insights report in four major areas:

• The size and complexity of database estates are different from other sectors, with a nuanced difference between smaller firms and those with very large database estates.
• There is far wider use of monitoring tools and the data gained from those tools is shared with more teams across the business.
• There is a need to manage people and compliance much more closely, probably prompted by the move to remote working.
• The sector is ahead of the curve in the requirement to monitor cloud and hybrid database environments.