Mastering Data Lineage under RDARR

Leveraging it in business use cases to foster a data-driven organisation

Data lineage is a decisive capability for banks to turn complex data landscapes into transparent, reliable and value-creating assets. By showing where data originates, how it moves across systems and is transformed and where it is used, lineage enables better data quality, faster root-cause analysis, more efficient change impact assessments and greater trust in reports, models and analytics – it fosters a data-driven organization.

At the same time, the ECB’s RDARR Guide raises the expectations for lineage documentation, requiring banks to document lineage on data-attribute-level and front-to-end. In practice, this creates challenges around granularity, the definition of “front”, maintainability, and ownership.

This whitepaper discusses how banks can meet these expectations without creating overengineered solutions. We argue for a business-led, proportionate approach with flexible granularity based on criticality and materiality, complemented by targeted technical drill-downs where needed.

Effective data lineage should not be seen as a one-off compliance exercise. Embedded into governance, change and data quality processes, it becomes a powerful enabler of data-resilience, AI readiness and data-driven decision-making – helping banks create tangible value beyond regulatory alignment.

You can download the complete white paper at the top of this page.