Operations

The goal of any data quality program is to improve quality of data at the source. Once a financial institution’s data lineage capabilities are in place, a key starting point for data quality initiatives is the confirmation of critical data attributes for each major business line and functional area. The data quality program should define […]

Organizations will need to modify or redesign their loss reserve processes and systems based on the new CECL standard in light of the substantive changes in methodology. As CECL requires a forecast of loan losses over the life of the instrument, both at the time of origination as well as the revaluation on an ongoing […]

Entities must first include the new CECL disclosures in their financial statements and regulatory reports (e.g., the quarterly call report), commencing with the aforementioned effective dates. There is no separate filing requirement for CECL. The structure and granularity of an entity’s income statement and balance sheet does not to change, as the details of the […]

Editor’s Note: This guest blog post comes courtesy of Gail Cole with Avalara. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. is a game changer for online sellers and other businesses that sell across state lines. A state can only tax a business that has nexus, a significant connection to the state. For decades, nexus […]

A final capability that is emerging is the establishment of formal data contracts between data owners and data consumers and integrates each of the key capabilities described in our previous blogs. A data contract is an agreement that specifies data owner accountability regarding data delivery acceptability levels, as well as the consequences and expectations for […]

In today’s world  of “Cloud Everything” using “Hyper Everything” we still see an old problem creating challenges. Most IT organizations are still struggling to translate business requirements into technology requirements. Cloud has allowed us to simply accelerate the process of seeing the disconnect. I had the opportunity to hear about this experience from one of […]

CECL requires loss estimates to include relevant information about past events, current condition and reasonable and supportable forecasts using both internal and external information, including a range of qualitative and quantitative factors. Estimates of expected credit losses must consider information related to the borrower’s creditworthiness, the issuer’s underwriting practices, and the current and forecasted direction […]

Healthcare practitioners must untangle the complex relationship of data analytics in order to provide a proper value for patients. Visibility To ensure that patients receive the best care possible, healthcare teams must continuously monitor the performance of the healthcare facility and the daily operations. With open visibility, practitioners establish a sense of trust and with […]

CECL, or current expected credit loss, is a new accounting standard that will change how financial institutions account for expected credit losses. Complying with the new CECL standard will have a major impact on an institutions’ operations, accounting/finance, IT, credit, and risk processes and systems. Under current US GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles), an “incurred […]

The business capabilities presented in our new guide demonstrates how forward-thinking financial services companies are leveraging data governance to create value for the enterprise. Accurate and timely information continues to be a key driver of enabling better decision making. Capabilities such as data principles and strategy, data architecture, organizational roles, authoritative sources, data lineage, data […]

This is the final post in our series on maintaining regulatory-compliant IT systems in the cloud. In this post, we’ll go over the key takeaways from the series and then we’ll send you on your way! Regardless of how much control you have over your IT systems, if you are using them for regulatory purposes, […]

Does your business structure help or hurt your DevOps move? “Organizational DevOps” is the enterprise level action for a DevOps strategy and tactics. There is a natural struggle when moving towards DevOps, but therein is the value. First some context … Process or Project  Operations management is the attempt to run things better – in the current […]

DevOps was first introduced in 2008 as an extension of proper development, but shortly thereafter, “OpsDev” was on many of our minds. I believe the earliest mention of OpsDev was 2012 [Randy Clark in UK Business Computing World, “DevOps or OpsDev?”]. Please forgive me if you made an earlier mention! Why the Name Debate? There […]

As we’ve learned in the previous posts in this series, having a thoughtful, thorough cloud vendor qualification process and intelligent SLAs in your cloud vendor contracts will help you maximize the value of the cloud while maintaining regulatory compliance. In addition, here are some tips and best practices to help you knock it out of […]

Establishing the best supply chain possible is paramount to teams and leaders responsible for meeting the product and service needs of their internal and external customers. Fortunately, the supply chain world is constantly evolving and challenging leaders to reevaluate their place within the ecosystem. As innovations in process and technology are introduced, the speed of […]

In my previous post in this series, we discussed how to qualify cloud vendors. Once that process is complete, the second step to maintaining compliance is to document your specific regulatory requirements in a contract with the cloud vendor, usually in the form of service-level agreements (SLAs). In this blog post, I include a range […]

We recently completed a 21 CFR Part 11 gap analysis engagement for a client that was largely using SaaS applications, but had no cloud vendor qualification process in place. They had just been allowing each business unit to select the applications that met its user requirements, accept whatever validation documentation the cloud vendor supplied (if […]

Last week Amazon announced the release of a new node for Amazon Connect: Get Metrics. It is available from the Set menu in regular contact flows, customer queue, hold and even whisper flows and allows us to dynamically query queue data. While the Check Queue Status node (available under the Branch menu in some contact […]

While my earlier blog posts were focused on Agile Risk Management, I am taking some time off from this to familiarize myself with a new subject – Time Management. “Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed” – Peter Drucker One fascinating way that I have found to help […]

Any time you take advantage of a cloud service – infrastructure, platform, or software – for a regulated purpose, you are ultimately responsible for its regulatory compliance, not the cloud vendor. This is critical for you to remember. So, how can you ensure regulatory compliance of a software system you did not build, you do […]