Certeco Leads on IT Change Programmes for Financial Industry

LONDON, April 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

To watch an interview with Certeco on the challenges the financial sector is facing click here.

Banking and financial services organisations are facing enormous challenges with the amount of change being driven through the market place, says city IT firm Certeco.

Certeco works with four major UK banks and some of the country's largest insurance companies helping to deliver business technology change programmes often introduced as a result of mergers and acquisitions or regulatory changes.

As Chairman Adam Ripley explains: "Banking and financial services organisations are facing enormous challenges with the amount of change being driven through the market place at present. Competition in this marketplace is fierce and this on its own drives enormous change through a business. If this wasn't enough, mergers, acquisitions, disposals, some of them being driven by the government, alongside regulatory pressures are all creating change within the market place."

Managing Director, Gary Davies says that the company is witnessing two major issues impacting the financial sector. Firstly it's the business, rather than purely IT, managing the large scale change and regulatory programmes that affect day to day operations.

"This is something quite new to them and they are now having to use third party organisations to help them plan, to help them to make these projects transparent so as they are able to both deliver the projects but also to manage their 'business as usual' day to day activities," he says.

"The second issue is they really need to get these projects to market quicker than their competitors," he adds. Mr Davies says that new IT programmes "can cause real chaos on day one of implementation".

"It's imperative that testing is involved very early on in the process," he adds.

"The ultimate goal is for the business to operate uninterrupted on day one of implementation. We really want to see that business on the front page, not for failure but for success."

About Certeco

Certeco, which offers specialist technology and business change consultancy to Banking, Insurance and Financial Services companies, is the fastest growing IT services company in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100.

Its services enable companies to plan, analyse, manage, test and deliver enterprise change programmes, ensuring the systems are 'fit for purpose' before implementation in a 'live' business environment. The firm, which counts 12 of the largest financial services organisations amongst its clients has offices in London, Ipswich and Edinburgh and has a workforce of over 130 and annual sales of over £11m. For more information, visit http://www.certeco.co.uk.