Despite investments in talent and technology, the FCA was struggling to realise the full benefits. The legacy data platform was being replaced with a modern, cloud-based platform, but without proper governance and data management foundations, the organisation couldn't effectively innovate with data, promote self-service reporting, or scale whilst remaining agile.
The Aim
Establish a comprehensive data governance framework and cloud data strategy, enable the FCA to become a data-driven organisation, and restore trust in data. The aim was to better manage strategic data assets across their entire lifecycle, from submission to retention, whilst promoting self-service reporting and meeting the needs of teams across the organisation.
Challenges
The FCA knew its investments in data science and cloud infrastructure held significant potential, but organisational and technical gaps were preventing value realisation. The transformation faced several critical obstacles:
- Overbearing processes and cumbersome systems: Legacy processes and systems were hindering the organisation’s ability to innovate with data and technology, limiting agility and preventing the data science team from delivering value despite significant investment in capabilities.
- Lack of cohesive data governance strategy: Without a proper data governance strategy and clear framework for managing data assets, the organisation couldn’t effectively use data to meet cross-functional needs or promote self-service reporting at scale.
- Limited data discoverability and traceability: The absence of metadata management policies and processes meant data wasn’t discoverable or traceable, making it difficult for teams to find and trust the data they needed for decision-making.
- Complex submission processes: Data submission processes for member bodies (such as retail banks) weren’t optimised to capture, manage and process complex datasets efficiently, creating operational bottlenecks and data quality issues.
These combined challenges prevented the FCA from becoming a truly data-driven organisation, signalling the need for comprehensive data governance and a modern data management model aligned to cloud architecture.
Strategic Solutions
Analytics8 partnered with the FCA to establish cloud data strategy and comprehensive data governance, enabling the organisation to maximise its technology investments.
- Cloud data strategy and management model. We helped the FCA establish their cloud data strategy and data management model, providing a clear framework for how the organisation would manage and use data in the modern platform.
- Comprehensive data governance plan. We created a detailed governance plan outlining how to better manage and use strategic data assets throughout the entire lifecycle, from submission to retention, with clear ownership and accountability.
- Current state assessment and recommendations. We conducted a detailed assessment of the current state, providing recommendations on architecture, design, governance, and technology to guide the transformation programme.
- Metadata management framework. We designed metadata management policies and processes to ensure data was discoverable, traceable, and aligned to fair use policies, driving adoption and usage of the new platform.
- Data Vault implementation and automation. We leveraged a Data Vault approach and automated development and testing within the cloud data platform, working closely with FCA to educate teams and implement Data Vault best practices aligned to core business objectives.
- Transformed submission processes. We redesigned submission processes for member bodies (such as retail banks) based on data management lifecycle principles, enabling better capture, management and processing of complex datasets.
Technologies: Cloud data platform, Data Vault, metadata-driven development, automated data engineering and testing.
Results
The FCA’s data governance and cloud transformation programme established foundations for becoming a data-driven organisation, including:
- Trust restored in data: Comprehensive governance framework and metadata management enabled teams across the organisation to discover, trace, and trust data for decision-making.
- Accelerated delivery through automation: Metadata-driven development and automated data engineering and testing allowed for quicker and more cost-effective delivery of data integration solutions.
- Enhanced submission processes: Transformed data submission processes for member bodies enabled more efficient capture, management and processing of complex datasets from retail banks and other regulated entities.
From investment to value realisation: Modern data platform and governance framework enabled the FCA to maximise investments in talent and technology, transforming from an organisation limited by legacy processes to a data-driven regulator capable of innovation, self-service reporting, and agile scaling.