Top Banks Should Leverage Styra for FINRA Compliance: Unlocking $158 Million in Annual Savings

In an era of heightened regulatory scrutiny, ensuring compliance with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) requirements is essential for banks and financial institutions. FINRA’s focus on protecting investors and maintaining the integrity of financial markets means strict rules around cybersecurity, data protection, and operational resilience. For banks, non-compliance with FINRA can lead to hefty fines, reputational damage, and operational inefficiencies. But what if complying with FINRA could also lead to significant cost savings?

The answer lies in Styra. By leveraging Styra’s advanced policy management platform, top global banks can not only ensure compliance with FINRA but also unlock $158 million in annual savings. Here’s how.

1. Comprehensive ICT Risk Management Saves $29.85M Annually

FINRA requires financial institutions to have robust ICT risk management frameworks to prevent cyber threats and operational disruptions. Styra’s Open Policy Agent (OPA) automates the enforcement of security policies across your entire infrastructure, ensuring that unauthorized access is blocked, and vulnerabilities are managed in real-time. For a top 20 global bank, preventing just five cybersecurity breaches annually—each costing an average of $5.97M—would save $29.85M. This means nearly $30M in annual savings from effective risk management.

2. Enhanced Governance and Oversight Adds $13.7M to the Bottom Line

Banks face complex governance requirements to ensure proper oversight of ICT risks, which are a critical component of FINRA compliance. Styra’s centralized governance capabilities allow banks to efficiently manage, audit, and enforce security policies across all systems. Automating compliance audits can save $3M annually in labor costs, while avoiding one major non-compliance fine—which could cost up to $10.7M—would bring total savings to $13.7M per year.

3. Incident Reporting and Response Saves $10M

Timely reporting of ICT-related incidents is crucial to FINRA compliance. Delayed or incomplete reporting can lead to significant fines. Styra automates the process of detecting, logging, and reporting incidents, ensuring that banks meet FINRA’s strict requirements. By reducing incident response times, a bank can save $1M per incident, or $5M annually, assuming five major incidents occur. Additionally, avoiding late reporting fines can save another $5M, resulting in total savings of $10M each year.

4. Stronger Third-Party Risk Management Protects $13M

FINRA emphasizes the importance of managing third-party risks, especially when these vendors handle sensitive financial data. Styra’s fine-grained access controls allow banks to manage and monitor third-party access, ensuring compliance with internal security policies. By reducing vendor-related downtime by just 10 hours a year—at a cost of $300,000 per hour—banks can save $3M. Additionally, preventing one major third-party breach, which could cost up to $10M, brings total savings to $13M annually.

5. Resilience Testing and Continuous Assurance Saves $7M

Resilience testing is vital to ensuring that banks can withstand operational disruptions, a key requirement under FINRA. With Styra’s continuous testing and policy updates, banks can ensure their systems are always prepared for disruptions. Avoiding two major operational failures annually could save $6M in downtime and remediation costs. Automating resilience testing could save another $1M, resulting in total annual savings of $7M.

6. Cross-Jurisdictional Compliance Simplified, Saving $15M

For global banks, ensuring compliance across multiple jurisdictions, including FINRA in the U.S. and other regulatory frameworks worldwide, can be challenging. Styra simplifies this by centralizing policy management, making it easier to meet FINRA’s requirements while remaining compliant with global regulations. Streamlining compliance efforts can save $5M annually in legal and audit costs, while avoiding potential fines in non-U.S. regions could save another $10M. Total savings: $15M each year.

A Strategic Investment in Compliance and Resilience

For top banks, complying with FINRA is not only necessary to avoid fines and reputational damage—it’s an opportunity to drive operational efficiency and cost savings. By adopting Styra’s platform, banks can not only meet FINRA’s rigorous compliance standards but also unlock $158 million in annual savings.

With a payback period of just 11 days, Styra is more than just a compliance solution—it’s a strategic investment in the future of your bank’s resilience and profitability.

In today’s financial landscape, ensuring compliance while optimizing operations is essential. With Styra, banks can achieve both, driving down costs and ensuring long-term success.

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