Banks will increasingly question the value generated by such data, as the ability to manage and leverage upon it will make a direct impact on their revenues. As part of larger information governance initiative there will be a need to put in place a strategy for dealing with the assimilation of unstructured data and invest in technologies that will transform the growing pile of data into communal knowledge pools.

2007 will witness the coming of age of the movement away from mass marketing to focus marketing, as banks will have to cope with greater fragmentation of the target markets. "Know Your Customer" will now have to be dealt in its literal sense. Banks that can seamlessly integrate the customer data irrespective of their structure/source will be best positioned to leverage on the information and attain higher performance.

3. Challenges encountered in the implementation of SEPA
The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) involves the creation of a Euro Zone in which all-electronic payments, be it national or international are considered to be domestic. It aims to improve the efficiency of international payments, and also to develop common financial instruments, standards, procedures and infrastructure that would result in economies of scale. The establishment of SEPA has two major milestones:
o January 1, 2008 when Pan-European payment instruments for Credit Transfers, Direct Debits and Debit Cards will be available to the customer in addition to the national ones
o December 2010 when the Pan-European ones would replace majority of the national payment instruments

With the first milestone fast approaching, banks in the SEPA area will be required to invest heavily in technology in order to support the SEPA payment instruments. Even though SEPA is a regulation whose implementation is mandatory, banks are going to be faced with challenges which need to be met head on.

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