As the saying goes, “information is power” and we believe that invaluable statistics can provide the power every firm needs to succeed. 

To help you gain qualitative insights and make better business decisions, our team here at FutureVault has compiled a list of 50 of our favorite (and important) statistics ranging from regulatory compliance and security to digital transformation, document management, and paper usage that all financial service firms should be aware of.

Regulatory Compliance

Companies are facing intense regulatory pressure from both domestic and foreign regulators, enforcement authorities, and others, resulting in increased efforts to button up internal policies and procedures while responding to extensive inquiries and investigations. Below are several interesting and significant figures showcasing the importance of maintaining compliance for any type of business, especially within financial services. 

1. Globally, businesses spend nearly $436 billion on compliance.
2. There has been a 45% increase in the cost of non-compliance since 2011.
3. The average cost of compliance is $5.5 million versus an average of $14.8 million for non-compliance, showing that it is 2.7 times more costly for an organization to not comply with regulatory mandates.
4. Having a dedicated incident response team can save businesses an average of $14 per record lost or stolen.
5. 40% of organizations rated their compliance training programs as basic or reactive while 47% claimed that keeping policies current with changing regulations was their number one challenge.
6. On average, businesses in the U.S. spent $10,000 per employee on regulatory costs, regardless of size.
7. Having a compliance leader in the C-suite saves businesses $1.25 million on average.
8. A corporate data security training program can reduce total compliance costs by an average of $2.5 million.
9. Regulatory change has increased 500% since the 2008 global financial crisis and has heightened regulatory costs in the process.
10. Only 18% of organizations have automated processes for IT risk data collection and reporting, despite it being the most effective way to mitigate risk.
    
    

Digital Transformation

For years, digital technology has provided business leaders with powerful tools to increase efficiencies and deliver growth. New innovations and disruptions have driven digital transformation across the entire global economy, driving digital adoption trends. Here are a few key statistics that show why digital transformation matters and where it is headed.

1. Digital-first companies are 64% more likely to achieve their business goals.
2. 56% of CEOs say digital improvements have led to increased revenue for their company.
3. By 2025, 3 out of every 4 business leaders will leverage digital platforms to adapt to new markets and industries.
4. 58% of businesses that had not yet begun a digital transformation program said that COVID-19 has accelerated their digital plans.
5. 91% of businesses are now involved in digital transformation, with 87% of management prioritizing digitalization.
6. The implementation of digital technologies can help accelerate progress towards enterprise goals such as financial returns, workforce diversity, and environmental targets by 22%.
7. 76% of financial service executives state investing in customers during digital transformation projects is a top priority.
8. 84% of business executives say that new business opportunities have emerged as their companies make digital transformations.
9. 85% of financial institution executives acknowledge their middle and back offices do not support the front office in meeting customer expectations.
10. Since the start of COVID-19, 85% of executives said their businesses have accelerated the implementation of technologies that digitally enables employee collaboration.
    
    

Document Management

Managing documents, information, and knowledge can contribute to business efficiency and effectiveness for organizational competitiveness. Here are some important statistics that will likely make you rethink your document management strategy.

1. Professionals spend nearly 50% of their time searching for information and take an average of 18 minutes to locate each paper document.
2. The average worker shares 6 documents as email attachments each day.
3. 86% of employees say that they usually experience difficulty searching for office files when they need to.
4. 8 in 10 workers have to recreate documents that already exist because they’re unable to find them.
5. Document issues account for more than 21% of daily productivity loss.
6. Document management software lets companies save as much as $1 to $5 per document.
7. Using document management solutions allows companies to reduce errors by up to 30%.
8. Businesses spend 5% of their budgets on filing, approximately $25,000 to fill a typical four-drawer file cabinet and an additional $2,000 to maintain it every year.
9. Integrating e-signatures into your workflow can save an estimated $20 per document and reduce turnaround times by 80%.
10. In the finance industry, using e-signatures will allow companies to hamper file mishandling by 66% and lessen scanning mistakes by 92%.
    
    

Data Security

During the last decade, businesses have experienced an increase in data hacks—and this is making information security more important than ever. Our digital information should be treated with the same level of focus, expertise, and fiduciary considerations as are one’s financial assets. In order to give you a better idea of the current state of overall security, we’ve compiled a list of 10 important data security statistics that your organization needs to pay close attention to.

1. 60% of small firms go out of business within 6 months of a serious data hack.
2. The average cost per lost or stolen record in a data breach is $148.
3. Nearly half of organizations leave 1,000+ files with sensitive data open to all employees, whether the employees actually need access to the data or not.
4. Average damages from a data breach for small businesses are approximately $690,000, and for middle market companies, it’s over $1 million.
5. 95% of cyber-security breaches are caused by human error.
6. $2.4 million is the average cost of malware attack spending and the top cost to companies.
7. The average time to identify a breach in 2020 was 207 days and the average lifecycle of a breach was 280 days from identification to containment.
8. The financial services industry takes in the highest cost from cybercrime at an average of $18.3 million per company surveyed.
9. On average, a financial services employee has access to nearly 11 million files the day they walk in the door. For large organizations, this number goes up to 20 million files.
10. Financial services have the highest percent of exposed sensitive files at 21%.
    
    

Paper Usage

Financial service providers generally incur significant costs within the end-to-end value chain of their records management system. Paper-based processes waste time and money, increase security risks, and raise employee turnover rates. Below are a few interesting statistics regarding the true cost of having inefficient paper processes.

1. On an enterprise level, 15% percent of an organization’s revenue is spent creating, managing, and distributing documents.
2. Companies in the U.S. spend over $120 billion on printed forms, most of which become outdated within 3 months.
3. Paper use in an average business grows by 22% a year, meaning paper costs double every 3.3 years.
4. 46% of employees of small- and medium-sized businesses still waste time on inefficient, paper-related workflows daily.
5. Scanning, tagging, and filing a single page of records can take up to 5 minutes.
6. The average employee prints out nearly 10,000 sheets of paper per year.
7. Approximately 45% of all pages printed in the offices eventually end up in the trash by the end of the same day.
8. On average, the cost in labor to file one document is $20 and to find one misfiled document is $120.
9. It is estimated that the number of documents printed each year stands at 7.5 billion with 15 trillion copies of originals being photocopiers annually.
10. More than 70% of today’s businesses would fail within 3 weeks if they suffered a loss of paper-based records due to fire or flood.