The SA financial services sector is undergoing dramatic change because of pressures to meet new regulatory imperatives, such as Basel II.
According to Wilhelm Hamman, a senior business technologist at Computer Associates (Africa), compliance with Basel II will force financial services institutions to rethink a number or critical business systems.
"Risk management is an area that will come under the spotlight," he says. "For Basel II compliance, the financial services sector will have to move from static risk management to more dynamic, proactive risk management systems.
"One of the keys to this transformation will be the consolidation of data - and of internal technologies - in moves to improve operational efficiencies and security," says Hamman.
"Characterised by many disparate, often fragmented and duplicated systems employing a wide variety of technologies, the majority of financial services organisations in SA are unlikely to meet Basel II`s strict operational risk management requirements unless they can dramatically consolidate the massive amounts of information generated in their environments."
Hamman says Computer Associates is positioned as a security management company that aims to resolve the complexities involved in centralised security management. Spearheading this drive is the delivery of its innovative security command centre focussed on centralising security management and addressing the advanced data management and reporting requirements.
"This will enable organisations to monitor and manage virtually all aspects of enterprise security - in real-time - from a single, centralised location.
"By collecting and integrating key security and system data from disparate technologies, as well as integrating that into their service centres for effective incident management, the command centre approach will provide the tools necessary for decision-makers to adopt a proactive approach to operational risk management - as required by Basel II - with automated alerts, detailed reports and remediation opportunities."
Hamman adds that a positive spin-off will be better customer peace of mind and significantly improved cost-to-revenue ratios as a direct result of increased operational efficiencies due to reduced systems complexity.
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