Driving Business Value: How Data Governance Transforms Banking Operations

An interview with one of our speakers at the 8th Annual Retail Banking Technologies MENA Summit, 26 - 27 November 2024, Dubai.

Why is ongoing training essential for maintaining data quality in banking operations?

1. How do you balance the need for data security with the need for data accessibility and usability?

At Banque Misr, we strike a balance between data security and accessibility through a comprehensive approach that entails using:

a.?????? role-based access controls where we control who can access the data based on their roles, making sure only the right people have access

b.????? implementing strong security measures like encryption and regular security checks

c.?????? ensuring the use of easy-to-use data management tools (e.g. Cloudera) to secure data while still being user-friendly

By continuously monitoring and updating our security practices, we ensure that data remains secure without compromising accessibility and usability.

2. How do you handle data quality issues, and what steps are taken to ensure data integrity and reliability?

We have taken a strategic approach across Banque Misr to instil the Data Governance function with a holistic approach to measuring data quality through KPIs, which enables us to actively manage the data quality. This?mega project has a multi-faceted strategy:

a.?????? starting with measuring data quality KPIs and publishing them into automated dashboards to ensure necessary governance around critical data elements and enable timely interventions to quality issues as they arise

b.????? secondly, prevention, ensuring that data is entered correctly from the beginning through implementing various validation rules at all data entry points to minimise errors at the source

c.?????? moreover, we run corrective data cleansing projects for the identified issues: inconsistencies, duplications and inaccuracies

In parallel with doing all technical enhancements and procedures revamp, we are providing continuous training for staff to emphasise the importance of data quality.

3. What are some best practices for integrating data from various sources to create a cohesive and actionable data strategy?

To integrate data from different sources, we at Banque Misr have managed to:

a.?????? set clear data governance policies and procedures to standardise data formats, ensuring consistency and compatibility across different data sources

b.????? understand the data lineage of each data element across multiple systems, whereby identifying the system of record and building API integrations to disseminate the data from the system of record to all the downstream systems

c.?????? any customer interaction that triggers a data change is funnelled to the system of record for the given data point so that it flows to all downstream systems, ensuring consistency

d.????? implement a centralised data warehouse as well as a data lake to combine data from various systems and store it in a central location for efficient data management of data

e.?????? set advanced data and visualisation tools as a tableau to provide useful and actionable insights to the bank management

Having a cohesive data strategy has helped Banque Misr to take it to the next level, where we started our CVM (Customer Value Management) and predictive modelling use cases, which helped the business surpass its targeted objectives and profitability figures.