The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that Bank of Nova Scotia wants to be part of the digital economy. The Globe's David Berman writes Scotiabank is not alone in its vision of a data-driven future: Globally, banks are embracing the potential of analytics, where processed consumer data can be used to sell more products and services. Efficiency is also part of the drive, just when banks are keen to cut costs. In January, the lender provided $2.2-million to create the Scotiabank Centre for Customer Analytics at the Smith School of Business at Queen's University, allowing professors, students and bank employees to collaborate on research projects. Within the bank, one of the key challenges is to connect all the areas that have been developing their own independent analytics capabilities, from risk management to wealth to retail banking, and make them more systematic across the bank. "How do you bring it all together, how do you connect it, how do you create the tools that support more scalable, repeatable analytics?" Scotiabank's Michael Zerbs said. "The urgency is to bring these different pieces together." For their part, customers need to understand how their data are being used.