The financial services sector is currently going through a period of transformation, with disruption creating a new breed of competition for traditional players. This has created a smarter, more connected industry, according to a new report released today by Telstra.Authored by Rocky Scopelliti, Telstra's group general manager for banking, finance and insurance, the report draws on research that includes interviews with c-suiters at 43 financial institutions from Australia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Scopelliti places a particular focus on how data analytics is a changing the competitive landscape, especially as organisations battle to win and retain digital savvy customers. He said one of the important questions that Telstra researchers put to the 43 financial institutions' executives at interviews was to ask them to rank in terms of priority where they put data and analytics on their strategic agendas. Across the spectrum this came in at number four."What many of the c-suite that we interviewed said was although it might be number four on their agendas it wasn't even on the list as recently as 18 months ago. That demonstrates the priority these institutions are placing on analytics," Scopelliti said.Data analytics is providing new ways to satisfy customers' centuries-old needs. The Telstra report notes that successful technology based competitors to the banking system, such as PayPal, have arrived just ahead of an expected inter-generational wealth transfer, which will create what Scopelliti calls "a new epicentre of disruptive innovation, squarely focused on Generations X and Y.""We are now witnessing the first wave of start-ups and established information services players challenging traditional models with propositions such as peer to peer lending, mobile payments, and personal financial management service propositions," he said. And the top performers in this new world order, he said, will have moved their data management away from a decentralised model, with each departments using data according to their own purposes to a centralised infrastructure with specialised skills and a single business intelligence unit."That is a model that applies enterprise rather wide when it comes to dealing with fraud and risk management," said Scopelliti . "And across customer facing channels such as call centres."And most fall well short of this ideal. "The results of our study indicate that 5 per cent of financial institutions across Asia Pacific consider themselves to be analytical competitors," he said.He conceded that banks in Australia are well short of the capability needed to be considered at the top level of "analytic competitor", where data management is integrated enterprise wide. "Just being able to get a single customer view has been pursued by the industry for quite some time."According to Scopelliti what is going to push Australia's banks into digital capability quickly is the degree to which all of their customers are now "mobilised" in a short space of time. That is, their preferred way of engaging with their bank is through mobile devices.