As banks continue to work diligently to prepare for the Federal Reserve’s Capital Analysis and Review matter requiring attention (CCAR MRA), many of them are finding that a mind shift is required. It’s no longer sufficient to think in terms of data management. For banks to ensure preparation for CCAR MRA and sustainable regulatory compliance, they need to shift their thinking to focus on data governance, which requires a different set of capabilities.
CCAR MRAs and governance capabilities
When preparing for CCAR MRAs, it is essential to have a comprehensive set of data governance capabilities that all work together.
Many technologies offer disparate capabilities that lack cohesion. Some provide a business glossary, data lineage and traceability, reference data, and master data management capabilities. Others may deliver the ability to manage critical data elements, metadata, and data quality testing.
The best data governance platforms provide all of these capabilities together in one easy-to-use, comprehensive solution. They can connect to your other systems in an automated and integrated way. They enable you to replace Excel, Sharepoint, and time consuming meetings and email chains with automated tasks, so you can minimize time spent on compliance activities while increasing accuracy and productivity.
So how do you know if your platform checks all the boxes? We’ve created a simple checklist of six must-haves for you to review.
6 must haves for your governance platform
- CCAR MRA reporting: An efficient platform delivers the Fed’s FR Y 14 M/Q/A and FR Y 9C schedule and data points definitions. They also help you identify CDEs and link to the report line numbers for the appropriate CCAR report.
- Reporting and dashboards: Make sure you have the ability to visualize a heat map dashboard of your CCAR status. You’ll also want the ability to monitor progress of CDE governance (including data lineage, data quality, and data ownership) as well as trend reporting for issue management, MRAs, and data quality.
- Flexible operating model: True data governance platforms provide defined governance roles and responsibilities with attention to workflows and reporting. They integrate processes across your existing data management tools, and deliver process flows tied to working groups by domain/schedule/data elements with automated workflows.
- Incorporates Data quality: Look for platforms that incorporate Fed edit checks with other data quality results to track the status of Fed edit checks and issue management reporting. You’ll also want comprehensive business rules so you can track quality scoring of these business rules and manage on-boarding of new business rules through automated voting and approval workflows.
- Tracks Data lineage: Make sure you can maintain business and technical lineage, including key controls. You’ll also need the ability to track – and automatically maintain – data lineage from source to target, manual intervention points, transformation logic and more.
- Issue management: Look for solutions that help you initiate workflows and monitor issue resolution for governance and quality issues with automatic escalation including for MRAs.
Questions for your vendor
To make sure you’re getting the right data governance platform to manage CCAR MRAs, ask your potential vendors these questions:
- How does your solution connect capabilities such as data lineage, metadata and data quality scores with data governance requirements?
- How does your solution help data analysts find accurate and trustworthy data?
- How are roles and responsibilities and the operating model combined with data management tools?
- How do you enable and automate workflows across data management tools?
As banks prepare for the Federal Reserve’s CCAR MRA, they must look to establish a solid data governance foundation by asking vendors crucial questions about their platform capabilities. With these six capabilities outlined above integrated into your platform, your organization will gain a sufficient data management strategy that ensures compliance, increases efficiency, and guarantees accuracy throughout your organization.
