"There remain in particular obstacles to unifying the disparate technology silos that can exist within financial sector organizations," states Peyman Mestchian, Managing Partner at London-based Chartis Research, a leading provider of research and analysis covering the global market for risk management technology.

He adds: "Data management still present a significant concern as regards the quality, application and speedy interpretation of data by management as well as its integration with real-time reporting systems to monitor potential risks. The ultimate goal is to achieve robust enterprise-wide risk management solutions across organizations."

Geographically, the RiskTech100TM comprises companies headquartered in sixteen countries. SunGard, SAS, Algorithmics, Fiserv and MSCI occupy the top five places in this year's rankings. The list is dominated by the US with 48 firms represented, followed by twenty UK firms, six French companies and five Canadian.

Chartis regards the most important supply-side trend to be the "continued acceleration" of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). A number of M&A deals over the past 12 months drove significant movement in the RiskTech100TM rankings.

"Traditionally, the risk technology sector has been characterized by a small number of Tier-1 IT vendors and a large number of smaller niche vendors," noted Mestchian. "The fragmented supply-side market structure reflects the silo-based way in which the buyers have traditionally purchased risk management systems. This situation, however, is now changing."