Experts speaking at the "Data Analytics Seminar for Financial Institutions" stated that effective data management is essential for corporate profitability in the face of changing consumer experiences, competition, and even fraud.

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They claimed that while institutions must strive for high-quality data because doing so ensures effectiveness, boosts accuracy, optimizes performance, and ensures its integrity, managing the data well and utilizing it to position operations is just as crucial.

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George N.K. Saka, general manager of Think! Data Services Ltd., said that businesses rely on data to function and that the quality of that data may make or break an enterprise.

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Therefore, he continued, "essential to data-driven success and corporate profitability" is good data management.

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Held on the theme ‘Deriving Value from Data in the Financial Sector in a Secured Manner’, the event was organised by Dataware. Citsys and Think! Data sought to raise awareness on the needs and benefits of data analytics in the financial services sectors, and to create a platform for discussion on how data analytics can be leveraged to tackle issues prevalent across the sector.

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Leveraging data

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For his part, Chief Executive Officer of Dataware, Kwesi Kwofie, said for financial institutions to stay ahead of the curve, they ought to pay more attention to data analytics to position themselves to better meet customer needs and monitor business performance.

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He said, for instance, organisations wanting to analyse customer sentiments, predict customer loss, detect fraud, predict loan default, and increase product uptake through personalised recommendation must prioritise how to leverage data from customer interactions.

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“In the financial space, there are a lot of competitions, and a lot more of these businesses have become more sophisticated in terms of how they serve their customers. A lot have automated using digital channels such as social media, mobile apps, and Internet banking. There is some interaction between the business and the customer at more touchpoints. Because all these interactions are automated, data is generated; so the key thing is how businesses leverage all this data to serve customers better,” he said.

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Mr. Kwofie added that by leveraging data, businesses can cut down costs and identify new revenue opportunities.

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“Any business will make money in either of these two ways. By cutting down costs, you are saving and making money; and by identifying new revenue opportunities, you are also tapping into a new way of making money. And one key thing that drives these two things is data, so the information you are gathering from the interaction with your customers would inform what you do because you can leverage on customers past and present interactions to predict what they are likely to do, and as a business to position yourself to provide services just when they need it,” he said.

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Data security

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Attah-Antwi Francis Roosevelt, a security analyst with Citsys, an Information Technology (IT) company, also stressed that businesses must ensure that their data is always secured; and for business continuity, have backups.

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“The core thing that businesses must look at is to ensure that their data is always secured. At the level where you even hand over a laptop or phone to any staff, you need to ensure that the device is well-protected and has end-point security installed on it to prevent any business data to be transferred and/or exposed. No matter what you do your data might be breached so you need to do off-site or cloud back-ups,” he said.

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