About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Tata Consultancy Services Details a Strategic Approach to BCBS 239 Compliance

Subscribe to our newsletter

As the January 2016 deadline for compliance with BCBS 239 approaches, banks are making substantial data management changes in order to meet the regulation’s requirement for on-demand enterprise-wide risk data aggregation and reporting. The task is not easy and includes data management challenges posed by data silos, legacy systems and poor data governance practices, but emerging data architectures and governance regimes that identify and manage risk can support not only compliance, but also more adaptable and scalable business.


Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) identifies where current data aggregation frameworks are failing and recommends an approach to BCBS 239 that will enable an automated on-demand view of a bank’s risk profile in ‘A Point of View’ paper authored by information architecture specialists Maryann Houglet and Lilian Penna, and entitled BCBS 239: An Urgent Call to Overhaul Risk Data Management.

The paper notes shortcomings in banks’ governance, risk and compliance programmes, and ongoing problems presented by silod IT operations for business functions, and states: “BCBS 239 could be the game changer. The regulation explicitly and directly tackles banks’ data architecture and the governance regime needed to identify and manage risks.”

While globally, systematically important banks will be first to face BCBS 239 compliance in January 2016, the regulation does not stop here, with numerous national regulatory bodies also requiring domestic systemically important banks to comply. Many are taking a tactical approach to compliance, but TCS argues that banks need strategic solutions and sets out a step-by-step approach to improving risk data management through the establishment of a risk data strategy, an architectural framework and a roadmap to BCBS 239 compliance.

The consultancy acknowledges that banks differ in their risk tolerance, profile and data management maturity, and must therefore drive their own approaches to aligning information and data architecture with a risk management framework, but warns: “Moving forward without a plan that incorporates parallel businesses, data and governance programmes can distract from achieving a bank’s compliance goal, introduce risks and increase the time and cost required for compliance.” On a wider scale, it concludes: “The urgency of achieving risk data clarity and transparency through data management principles mandated by BCBS 239 cannot be overemphasised.”

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Navigating a Complex World: Best Data Practices in Sanctions Screening

As rising geopolitical uncertainty prompts an intensification in the complexity and volume of global economic and financial sanctions, banks and financial institutions are faced with a daunting set of new compliance challenges. The risk of inadvertently engaging with sanctioned securities has never been higher and the penalties for doing so are harsh. Traditional sanctions screening...

BLOG

Shield Earns Top Gartner Rankings Across All DCGA Use Cases and Makes Deloitte Technology Fast 500TM

Specialist surveillance solution provider Shield closes 2025 with a sharp uptick in industry recognition, underscoring its growing influence in digital communications governance. Gartner has ranked the Tel Aviv–based firm among the top three providers across all six evaluated use cases in its Critical Capabilities for Digital Communications Governance and Archiving (DCGA), while also naming Shield...

EVENT

RepRisk Sustainability Breakfast Roundtable London

The London sustainability breakfast is part of the global roundtable thought leadership event series hosted by RepRisk in key markets, including, New York, Toronto, London, Frankfurt, Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Hong Kong and Singapore in 2026.

GUIDE

Regulatory Reporting Handbook – First Edition

Welcome to the inaugural edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Reporting Handbook, a comprehensive guide to reporting obligations that must be fulfilled by financial institutions on a global basis. The handbook reviews not only the current state of play within the regulatory reporting space, but also looks ahead to identify how institutions should be preparing for...