Suleiman Barau, deputy governor, operations, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), last week, met with the outgoing IT Standards Council members to discuss the activities of the Council and progress made against their mandate within the last two years.
The current IT Standards Council whose two-year tenure ends next month (May 2015) was inaugurated by Tunde Lemo, former deputy governor, CBN, on May 10, 2013, with the mandate to drive the adoption, implementation and compliance to industry IT Standards in the Nigerian financial services industry.
The need to define IT standards for the industry arose in 2010 at the industry infrastructure transformation programme where the CBN in conjunction with the Bankers’ Committee sought to identify ways to reduce the significant high cost to income ratios of banks within the industry as well as improve operational efficiency. This transformation programme is coordinated by the Shared Services Office in the CBN and is the driver of the collaborative strategic response by the financial services industry to realise reduction in the industry annual cost base.
IT, which is the key driver of banking, was however lagging global best practices; limiting banking operating efficiency, cost effectiveness, regulatory information and risk management practices. To address this gap and provide guidelines for application and utilisation of information technology, industry IT standards were defined to articulate and provide a point of reference for the utilisation of IT. The IT standards cut across different IT capability areas and include those to improve information security, IT service management, systems availability and information exchange.
The achievements of the IT Standards Council within the last two years include: the release and publishing of the IT Standards Blueprint to Industry in January 2014; hosting of the blueprint on the CBN website; the development of an aggregate rating system that will be used to rate the compliance of banks individually and as an industry to these Standards, and lastly, the conduct of a Baseline assessment of three priority 1 IT Standards on the Deposit Money Banks (DMB) to determine their level of compliance to the standards.
Currently, the Council is reviewing the IT Standards Blueprint to align with current realities and trends, and is also planning to drive an industry wide remediation exercise on the gaps identified during the baseline assessment that was conducted last year on the banks.
Barau commended the Council on their achievements and assured them of his continued support and the support of the CBN. He reiterated that the mandate given to the Council was an important one and would go a long way to drive the adoption of world-class IT standards in the Nigeria financial services industry, enabling the industry reap the full benefits of its investments in information technology.
HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE
