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  The world today is information driven

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The world today is information driven. Getting the right information to the right person can make a huge difference in terms of a company's bottom line. But are some systems just too complicated to be fully integrated? Although the financial services industry spends more on information technology than any other industry ($500 billion worldwide in 2009), many financial institutions do not have fully integrated information systems. Why is this so? The reasons are many. Banks were the first organizations to adopt information systems, so many of their systems are legacy (old) systems that would be difficult and expensive to update. In addition, many banks have gone through multiple phases of acquisition, which in itself results in duplicate information systems. Government regulations on financial institutions have also brought about additional systems. And many financial organizations write their own proprietary systems for market trading, thinking that gives them a leg up on their competition. Some of the more sophisticated financial products, such as hedge funds and derivatives, are generated via complex programs. In addition, a great deal of financial tracking is performed on spreadsheets, which may not be connected to any integrated system. The end result of these unintegrated systems is a lack of consistent data across systems, which can lead to an inaccurate assessment of risk. Most financial systems written today are honed for rapid trading, not for regulation or for tracking anomalies that could lead to problems. Some IT experts claim that the global financial networks are now unstable and that the fast quantitative trading programs in place could lead rapidly to potentially disastrous outcomes.

Question: 1. Do you think some of the problems associated with the financial crisis of 2008 could have been avoided if financial firms had more integrated information? If so, how, or if not, why not?