January 22, 2016 - Global risk and regulatory technology firm Wolters Kluwer Financial Services predicts that 2016 will be the year where the financial industry in Australia will begin "catching up" with its counterparts. The industry will achieve this by leveraging technologies and business models such as cloud computing, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and big data.

The benefits of cloud computing and BPO are now better understood by the industry, and with regulators slowly opening up to these models, Wolters Kluwer research suggests that about 30% of financial institutions within the region (compared to 0% in 2013) have the ambition to leverage cloud-based technology and/or BPO for regulatory reporting – with the main objective of reducing cost and being able to focus the core business.

Furthermore, as institutions start to strategically invest in big data, they will be able to better manage volumes (more data on cheaper hardware), variety (incorporation of more content – include unstructured data) and velocity (near real-time decision making using predictive and prescriptive analytics) to ultimately help move from a reactive approach into a more strategic, forward-looking one.