Across sectors, financial organisations have the potential to overcome challenges and ascend to new heights by prioritising digital transformation and partnering in new ways to innovate and increase efficiency. 

This new marketplace of open banking has enabled systems to quickly and seamlessly integrate with new platforms and applications. Physical banks and paper systems are rapidly being replaced by networked digital ecosystems. Regardless of whether a business was born in the digital era or is now catching up to it, none remain unaffected from the digital revolution.

With 77% of businesses in the financial services sector planning on increasing their digital investments in the next year. It is critical that businesses take an analytical and proactive approach to their digitalisation strategies to identify and prevent future network challenges in this fast paced industry.

How networks have become essential for the modern finance sector

Financial services are being reshaped by the globalisation of financial markets, technological advances, and structural changes, including the lowering of regulatory barriers. The international focus of financial services has involved increased financial integration, higher cross-border mergers and acquisitions of financial institutions, and lower barriers between markets. As the financial services industry grows globally, the need for communications and transactions spanning borders means that the finance industry has increased its reliance on the IT network. 

The network is considered one of the most critical resources in an organisation, providing the means of transmitting essential data from one computer to another. Networks are the hardware and software that enable computers to share resources and exchange data. They are categorised as internets, intranets and extranets. The Internet is a collection of individually managed networks, connected by intermediate networking devices, that function as a single large network. Intranet refers to a privately maintained computer network that can be accessed only by authorised persons and is limited to one institution, whereas extranet is an extension of an institution’s intranet, used to connect business partners. Read more.