• Innovation: Upwards of 70% of IT spend is dedicated to compliance, leaving only 30% of the budget for innovation. This is a tremendous drag on productivity, as organizations and business leaders want to be innovating. IBM partners with over 70 financial institutions to "put the industry muscle together."
• Global Financial Services Councils: In an effort to help mitigate the complexities associated with regulatory and compliance guidance which varies across both regions and industries, IBM has established a global Financial Services Council to help mitigate institutional risks and spread knowledge.
• The ripple effect: More room for innovation feeds back into the cycle, freeing up resources, expanding areas of business, and growing the customer base. The core framework that IBM is putting forth for financial services institutions enables users to see the "long-term value and benefit from all of this."

The Big Quote: "So it's one thing to say you're compliant. It's another thing to be able to say 'I can prove I'm compliant.' And what IBM offers in this framework is IBM can work with regulators and compliance authorities and auditors in all of the jurisdictions and demonstrate that their system offers a compliant framework. Now all I have to do is prove I didn't break the framework, and a whole lot of my audit compliance and regulatory expenses just went down. So it's a tremendous saving for me, and for lots of people within the financial services world."

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