Risk managers in Australia's banking sector are still trying to convince everyone else in the business lines to take data use and risk management more seriously. That was one of the themes to emerge from a webinar sponsored by Oracle and Asia Risk magazine.As Campbell Nicoll, chief risk officer, Regional Australia Bank, noted early on in the discussion:  "When we think about the royal commission findings, one of the takeaways was that there was a lot of behaviour going on in the various organisations that wasn't making itself visible to the senior leaders in the banks."Stuart Houston, banking innovation advisor, agile finance and risk at Oracle added: "Many of those issues really come around visibility of issues - the AML problems we are seeing [in Australia, from CBA and now Westpac] are part of something we have been seeing around the world for eight or nine years."He said much of the uncertainty was caused by "the many islands of data that exist to support various functions or processes". While the Royal commission findings "absolutely" had an impact on bank profits, the effect on revenue is coming from broader trends: very low interest rates and challenger banks - or neobanks. For example credit cards are being massively disrupted by the likes of Afterpay.Karen Ann Morgan, National Australia Bank's head of credit risk data and reporting, said that, while each risk business does have its own team of experts, "you need the ability to aggregate risk to look at it from a holistic perspective, especially if you were to have any alignment to strategy."Morgan suggested standardised terms could be introduced to Australia. "It's a logical step. Commonality of systems and definitions used externally and internally would reduce a massive amount of overlap and repetition. Also the clarity between the ADI and the regulators would mean controls could be so much more automated," she said.Beyond Bank's Nicoll noted that banks live off data, so "something as simple as a housing loan involves a huge number of data points. Having accurate data helps with regulatory requirements and assists to reduce your losses."He asserted that the major banks have 80 or 90 per cent of the market - CBA has 40 per cent of the housing market - and that the richness of this data gives the major banks a natural advantage."Accuracy of data is one of the hardest things to do, especially with legacy systems. The ability to accurately aggregate exposures is very difficult because the systems are very old. Every institution spends a lot of time cleaning data."