Finance firms show limited understanding of legacy systems

Most IT departments in the financial services sector fully understand less than half of their legacy systems for auditing and reporting purposes, even though most admit that much of those systems are considered mission critical, according to a new report.

Only about one out of ten firms have visibility of more than 75 per cent of their systems.

More encouragingly, 70 per cent of firms have an internal committee or group established to manage IT governance, with a similar percentage citing it as a high priority within the organisation.

But more than of half of firms admitted that developing an efficient IT governance strategy was not possible without effective visibility of legacy applications, while the complexity of legacy applications impacted on their ability to comply with industry regulations.

As for compliance with legislation, nearly 40 per cent of respondents said they now complied with Sarbanes-Oxley, while 36 per cent said work was currently in progress.

For Basel II, 41 per cent said they were now in compliance, while about 32 per cent were still grappling with the issue.

Six out of ten agreed that a lack of visibility of legacy systems adding to the challenge of meeting compliance.

The survey, entitled The Cost of Compliance and sponsored by Hal Knowledge Solutions, polled 60 senior financial sector IT professionals with direct responsibility for legacy applications.