Identifying Top Priorities for 2019: Participate In Safe Systems’ Annual IT Outlook Survey for Banks and Credit Unions
We want to hear from you for our annual industry report examining how community banks and credit unions plan to meet their IT, compliance and security needs in 2019.
To better understand banks’ and credit unions’ current IT situation, we have been surveying community banks and credit unions for the last 3 years. Our previous reports highlighted top IT priorities, IT challenges, security concerns and compliance issues, as well as what technologies and investments banks and credit unions plan to leverage in the coming year. We share the information gathered by publishing a white paper; last year’s was “2018 IT Outlook for Community Banks and Credit Unions.” The report is designed to provide community banks and credit unions with valuable peer data that can provide guidance for key IT, compliance and security decisions.
Looking back on 2018, some of the trends we saw included:
- Cybersecurity and Information Security Continue to Challenge Banks and Credit Unions
Cybersecurity was the greatest security challenge banks and credit unions foresaw for the year ahead and information security was also a top challenge.
- Compliance Continues to be a Challenge
Managing strict, ever-changing government regulations and guidelines is the greatest IT compliance challenge, which has led to the increasing trend of outsourcing compliance needs.
- Outsourcing Remains Beneficial and Important for Smaller Institutions
With limited internal resources and expertise, community financial institutions continue to augment their IT departments with outsourced service providers who are able to help them navigate the IT changes and meet examiner expectations.
- Technology Investment Continues
Community financial institutions continue to recognize the need for investing in new technologies and services.
- Both Community Banks and Credit Unions Have the Same Pain Points
The results indicated that both credit unions and community banks experience many of the same issues related to compliance, IT challenges and staffing constraints.
Other areas the survey focuses on include IT management issues, audit and exam preparation, additional technology challenges, vendor management, business continuity planning, reasons for change and implementation of new services and cloud usage.
We hope you will participate in the 2019 IT Outlook by taking our survey. By completing the survey, you will gain access to this comprehensive year-end report. Your anonymous responses will be aggregated to provide detailed graphs, charts and plenty of insight amongst your peers in the community financial industry.
