Tear Down the Silos

Silos make communication and analysis within a bank a difficult task, especially at the higher level of the management hierarchy, where information from different sources must be combined. It is a telling example that UBS needed six months to realize the full extent of its collateralized debt obligation (CDO) exposure. When outside actors are involved, be it investors, regulators or other financial institutions, information silos and the lack of conceptual clarity aggravate this problem still.

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