Santa Barbara Bank & Trust (SBBT), one of the largest banks in the United States, had recently been recapitalized and was preparing for acquisition. This was to be the first non-FDIC-assisted bank acquisition under the Dodd-Frank regulatory regime. New regulations required a complete review of the bank’s existing data and data management practices before the acquisition could be approved. Key challenges included:
- Weak Governance: There had been no formal data management activity in the bank and very little overall oversight of how data was used;
- Dense Infrastructure: Data was distributed among more than 50 legacy systems, each with its own technology and regulatory requirements;
- Vendor Resistance: Vendors had operated without previous incentives to coordinate the collection and usage of data;
- Low Quality: Individual data sets had rarely been tested for quality and some critical enterprise data sets had never been analyzed;
- Variable Accuracy: Some systems stayed in perfect balance at all times, and others were balanced daily, weekly, monthly or on a different schedule making comparisons across data sets especially difficult.
Apply the Data Management Association’s Body of Knowledge (DAMA-BOK) to assess the bank’s condition and correct major deficiencies in each area in preparation for the upcoming acquisition:
- Data Governance
- Data Architecture Management
- Data Development
- Data Operations Management
- Data Security Management
- Reference and Master Data Management
- Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
- Document and Content Management
- Metadata Management
- Data Quality Management
As a result, deficiencies were corrected and data made suitable for the upcoming transition. Santa Barbara Bank & Trust was successfully acquired by Union Bank on December 3, 2012 for $1.5 billion.