Wealth Access Report FINAL - Flipbook - Page 4
WHY DATA MANAGEMENT MATTERS
By: Kiah Lau Haslett
The pace of
technological
innovation is
accelerating.
Creating and
executing a data
strategy today
allows community
financial
institutions to be
prepared for an
uncertain future.
Community financial institutions have the potential to unlock greater
labor efficiencies, new revenue opportunities and better risk management.
The key to achieving these outcomes? Data.
That’s because better data can lead to better decisions, which can help executives achieve
operating leverage and improve efficiency. But much of that data has been stored as
entries that need to be cleaned and standardized in disparate, unconnected systems. The
work to extract and format the data is akin to an archeologist who starts digging and then
will need to survey, identify, extract and clean their artifacts so they can decide what’s
trash and what’s treasure.
Creating and executing an effective data strategy is imperative for executives, given how
technology is changing banking. Community financial institutions are at a pivotal junction:
There is a daunting amount of work to be done, but there are untold possibilities on the
other side. The data is there, the tools are available and there is even something of a playbook for institutions to follow to make the journey smoother.
“Smaller banks now have an opportunity to start seeing the big picture about their clients
like big banks do,” says Andy Zinn, chief innovation officer at Wealth Access, which helps
financial institutions with their data and sponsored this report. “Even though they don’t
have the $100 million-a-year tech budget, they’re able to … broaden the scope of what
they can see within their own four walls.”
Blind Spots
Sonata Bank in Brentwood, Tennessee, started its data journey early in its operation, after
the institution was recapitalized by an investor group in 2022. This has arguably given the
$222 million bank, a unit of Sonata Financial Holdings, a competitive advantage among
its peers.
Management knew that data was going to be a large part of its strategy and execution
2 | FINXTECH INTELLIGENCE REPORT