Data and Information Technology
What the exam tests
Data and IT questions test whether you can govern, query and protect lending data. Expect data quality, MIS, SQL logic, IT controls, cybersecurity and business continuity in a financial institution.
Core rules and concepts
- Data governance: ownership, stewardship, definitions, lineage, master data and data quality dimensions (accuracy, completeness, timeliness, consistency, validity).
- Reporting: a data warehouse and ETL layer reconcile source systems to MIS. Every KPI needs a definition, owner and refresh frequency.
- SQL: WHERE filters rows before grouping; HAVING filters groups; joins must respect cardinality to avoid double counting exposure.
- IT controls: access management, segregation of duties, change management, encryption, logging, vendor risk and periodic reconciliation.
- Cyber and continuity: incident response, RTO (time to restore) and RPO (acceptable data loss), backup testing, disaster recovery and RBI cyber-security expectations.
Worked example
Find borrowers with aggregate overdue exposure above ₹1 crore: SELECT borrower_id, SUM(outstanding_principal) AS exposure FROM loan_book WHERE days_past_due > 90 GROUP BY borrower_id HAVING SUM(outstanding_principal) > 10000000; The WHERE clause excludes standard accounts before aggregation; HAVING filters the grouped borrowers. If the report shows 1,000 records and 12 fail reconciliation, the error rate is 1.2%; against a 0.5% tolerance, the report is not fit for regulatory use until fixed.
Traps
Do not use production data in test environments. Do not confuse RTO with RPO. Do not treat cybersecurity as an IT-only issue; the board owns risk appetite. Do not aggregate exposure across tables without checking join keys and duplicate records.