An appreciation of the value of data as an essential element in maintaining customers' trust is radiating across all levels of some major financial services firms, according to a panel of data asset executives. This was one of the main points covered during a panel discussion at the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit in Sydney yesterday on how "being data literate … is a new organisational readiness factor". "Data governance was not even on any agenda 20 years ago; that is not necessarily the case now," said Priyanka Paranagama, chief data and transformation officer at Suncorp."In financial services, data literacy has improved significantly. For us it's not an optional item because trust is the key commodity data and therefore we can't afford to compromise. We've got enough trouble without that so therefore it is a non-negotiable."If you go into a board discussion, boards are interested in how we preserve data privacy and access rights," he said.Sharon Abbott is head of data governance for ANZ New Zealand - a point she emphasised several times during the panel discussion. Abbott noted that there has until now, seemingly always been "an opaqueness" about data. "Now we have democratisation of data, with availability on a desktop for everyone," she said."Increasingly, there are ways of valuing our data assets - think in terms of what it costs if you lose [a customer record]: what is the cost of replacement of a customer record? Or being pinged by GDPR because you cannot track that customer record, or delete it," she suggested. Abbott said that with this in mind, ANZ NZ is rolling out a data custodianship model across the business, with accountability for data. "The word 'custodian' invokes that sense of ongoing care, rather than meeting a duty and moving on," she said.Janice Carey, head of customer data and analytics at health insurance provider BUPA has also observed an improved understanding of the value of data: "We are now at a time in history where executives who are wanting to take their responsibilities but don't always know how to channel their energy. "Doing nothing was - in the past - always a choice when you were laying out your strategic thinking," she said."But we are in a world now where doing nothing is not an option as that strategy risks being left behind [by competitors]. It's a bad choice in meeting customer expectations - we really need to be engaging with a forward-looking approach."Suncorp's Paranagama added that all his direct reports and their direct reports, and any new recruits, already have key performance indicators for data governance, and the process is being overseen by a senior management team he termed the group data council. "A large proportion of my team have gone through [data governance] training and we are in the process of rolling that out to the broader technology community [within Suncorp] so it's a fairly expensive training program."This provoked a question in the Q&A session that followed on how the KPIs were measured."We have