Information Management Insight from Financial Services Algonquin Round Table by Jeff Picozzi

One of the benefits of working for an industry leader like Iron Mountain is that you have the opportunity of working with other industry leaders as we partner to solve information management challenges of not only the day, but those on the horizon. This was certainly the case late last week when Iron Mountain hosted an Information Economics Round Table for Financial Services at New York City's famed Algonquin Hotel.

While this recent version of the Round Table may have been less trendy then the one that saw the lights of Dorothy Parker, Harpo Marx, and Alexander Woollcott unabashedly critiquing life around Broadway in the 1920's, ours had its own share of information management dignitaries from the financial services industry.

The Round Table was a half-day session for professionals who manage their institutions' information program to gather and discuss best-practices, challenges, and trends amongst themselves and with Iron Mountains' thought leaders. The conversation, which was driven by the attendees, was a free flowing exchange of ideas (just like the original Round Table). As I listened to the discussion, I couldn't help but notice a few prevailing points.

The Changing Role of the Records Manager

It's easy to see that over the past few years the role of the records manager has changed dramatically - in fact, more often than not, they are now called information managers, at least in the financial services industry. The exponential growth in the volume and variety of information in current systems and new applications necessitated the expansion of the role to include consistent communication with IT. Partnering with IT and application developers allows you to understand the information being created and stored, and to manage it through its life cycle, according to company policy which is critical to satisfying regulator and customer requirements.

Here are some best-practices that your peers have implemented to help get the ball rolling:

Be part of the planning: IT more than likely has a scheduled meeting to review the progress of the procurement or development of applications, get on the invite.

Heavy Hitter: Make the case to senior management that information management needs to be part of the process, not just this one time, but going forward. Having a strong Information Governance Committee can help pave the way.

Make friends: Build relationships with people in the organization, the business line owners can provide you visibility.

Big Data is Great, but Data Quality Comes First

The Round Table participants all agree that Big Data and Analytics are critical to the support of the modern financial institution. However, before you can use the data to find the next great client solution, or target market, your information needs to be classified or tagged in a way that is consistent and manageable. Data Analytics needs to be holistic and agnostic of information type, to get there your data needs integrity. Our group of experts focused on the following best-practices:

Beware of Garbage in Garbage Out: The best analytic software is rendered useless if the data being analyzed is incomplete. This is dangerous because more and more business decisions are being made using analytics.

Life After Retention: Consider that your records have a business use that exceeds the legal retention period. Be sure to account for potential business value when applying your retention policy.

Metadata is King: A consistent and reliable system for applying metadata across your various information types (regardless if it's a physical or electronic asset) is the key to any analytics program. Start with clean metadata and the Big Data issue may not seem so big.

Iron Mountain and the participants of Round Table also discussed the importance of articulating the Value of Information and promoting the value of the program within their company. Implementing a risk and control framework can help you assess how compliantly your information policy is adhered to across the institution. It's important for those that manage the information lifecycle to own the policy and have the authority to assess it (work with your internal audit teams). It's not possible for the records and information professionals to be the information police, but creating, implementing, and assessing the policy is their domain.

Iron Mountain frequently hosts smaller events where luminaries of the information world can gather and exchange stories, best-practices and the occasional one-liner. Follow me on twitter @jpicozzi for information on upcoming financial services roundtables.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2015/industry/financial-services/informa...
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