Increasing demands from regulators, investors and other stakeholders for stringent data management controls at financial institutions has helped ClusterSeven report record profits for 2012 – net income up over 40% year-on-year to over £0.4m on record turnover of over £3.3m.
Ralph Baxter, CEO at ClusterSeven, said: “We are entering a new phase in the debate about ‘Big Data’ as evidenced by statements from both the Financial Services Authority in the UK and, in January this year, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. These are focused on how insurers and banks respectively manage and control their business-critical databases and spreadsheets. Last year saw regulators wake up to the fact that spreadsheets continue to be used extensively by all financial institutions and that the failure of many businesses to fully understand, control and monitor data held in spreadsheets leaves them – and their stakeholders – worryingly exposed to unacceptable risks.
“ClusterSeven has understood this absolute and fundamental use of spreadsheets by the world’s blue-chip institutions since it was founded in 2003, and I’m delighted to see that this is being corroborated by market and regulatory developments towards best-practice data management. The citation by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in particular was the first time that spreadsheet management has ever been specifically referenced at such a high level, a watermark in the approach to spreadsheet risk.”
London- and New York-based ClusterSeven was one of the first firms to identify how strategically important spreadsheets are to modern businesses and financial services institutions. It has developed a range of market-leading software products that provide oversight and transparency of a firm’s databases and spreadsheets, giving functions such as finance, risk, and internal audit full confidence in the integrity of their firm’s data while also offering substantial savings on the time and resources used to check data processes and accuracy.
Ralph Baxter, CEO at ClusterSeven, said: “Regulatory momentum is set to continue in 2013, and we fully expect further announcements from supervisors and authorities regarding how financial institutions control their data systems and spreadsheets. IT architectures were inadequate during global financial services crisis; the sentiment is now that the internal audit and other key functions should assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the internal control, risk management and governance systems and provide assurance on these systems and processes.
“This focus is about the end-to-end data process: where data comes from, how firms check it is correct, how they then use it and store it, who accesses it, and how it feeds into a firm’s balance sheet. Some institutions are managing millions of separate Excel or similar data files, with more being initiated every day, and it is clear that regulators and other stakeholders are demanding that institutions such as banks and insurers to have 100% total control of these vital – but insecure – files.”
