UK Financial Services Being Held Back by Lack of Real-Time Data to Make Critical Operational Decisions

Financial services organisations that can adapt and flex to suit new technology will be the ones that dominate the market. But according to new research from ActiveOps, provider of AI-powered Decision Intelligence for service operations, operations leaders within financial services are facing decision paralysis, struggling to make critical decisions due to poor data. The research itself – “Ready of Not AI is Here” – has highlighted the concerning state of play when it comes to real-time decision making when data is days, weeks or even months out of date, which in turn is impacting businesses’ ability to achieve their priorities in 2024. ActiveOps commissioned market research of more than 800 Chief Operations Officers, Chief Financial Officers, and Senior Heads of Operations across the globe - including the UK, Republic of Ireland, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa – to better understand the current data landscape, as well as AI adoption and maturity within operations in financial services. Kuljit Bawa, Managing Director, EMEIA at ActiveOps said: “It is clear from our research that operations have serious problems with data. Many have invested heavily in process reengineering and automation to drive efficiencies, and to support digitisation strategies, but have failed to address the fundamental data problem. Managing in an environment of spreadsheets, data siloes and decision making by hunch is not tenable, and operations teams can’t achieve their goals if these challenges and barriers remain. And for us as consumers this means continued high costs, slow delivery and poor customer engagement.” Key findings include:

• 90% of operational leaders not using real-time data to make critical decisions
• Just under a third – 30% – are basing decisions on data that is at least one week old
• 85% face significant challenges in getting insight from operational data
• 46% don’t trust their current operational data
• 42% of leaders are also experiencing challenges with inconsistent terms and metrics being used, which is likely having a knock-on effect on how relevant or trusted data seems to teams.

A third – 34% – of businesses are putting an emphasis on business resilience this year - but despite this current performance is low in a number of areas, including cost control, operational performance and risk mitigation, with up to 40% of leaders believing that their organisation is poor or average in these areas. The picture is particularly concerning in the UK with one in three operations leaders in finance unable to even access the data they need to make real-time decisions, while 41% have data that is irrelevant and almost half (46%) don’t trust their data. One of the biggest issues for operations leaders is having too much data, with 44% of leaders struggling to manage massive volumes of it. “Basing critical decisions on insights that are incomplete, inaccurate and weeks old puts operations on the back foot. In today’s world, where customer demands are so high, speed of decision making to drive productivity and efficiencies becomes a competitive advantage. Leading to faster turnaround times, reducing overtime, limited staff burnout and avoiding costly SLA breaches,” continued Kuljit. Despite the challenges, operations leaders are now recognising the power of data if it was accessible, relevant and available in real-time. The key to this is Artificial Intelligence (AI), and financial services companies will need to prepare themselves to embrace this technology so they can realise their potential through decisive decision-making. Kuljit concluded: “AI has the potential to transform the world of operations and confidence from operational leaders seems high. However, data holds the key to not only automate processes but to also support human decision making – via predictive and prescriptive insight in real-time.” To find out more, read the full whitepaper here.