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Sustainable Financial Services in the Digital Age, a joint report from UK Finance and Parker Fitzgerald, comes only days ahead of the introduction of the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) and highlights the need for firms to consider their exposure to risk and operational resilience in today’s digital age.
The report outlines how adopting new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, cloud computing and distributed ledger technology (DLT), will allow the financial services sector to develop new services and platforms to significantly reduce operational costs. Those organisations committed to full-scale transformation will be best placed to deliver the greatest benefits to customers and shareholders.
However, a failure to address emerging risks, as well as internal risk management processes, could lead to operational, as well as systemic, threats across the sector. At the core of sustainable digital finance is the management of operational risk and safeguarding of data, which are particularly poignant given the implementation of GDPR this week.
The report calls on the industry to collaborate with technology suppliers as well as domestic and cross-border regulators to create a risk framework that embraces the benefits of digital transformation with the following recommendations: