Commerzbank of Germany is implementing MKIRisk’s Global Manager & Risk Vision (GM/RV) solution for group-wide credit risk and exposure management.
When the system goes live, Commerzbank will be one of the largest GM/RV installations to date, the solution being used by more than 500 traders in 20 locations around the world.
Implementation of GM/RV, which got underway in December 1999, is being phased in by department rather than location. The first phase will cover interest rate products traded through the bank’s Frankfurt head office and its international branches in New York, London and Tokyo. This phase will also cover global reporting, which will be processed by GM/RV, with cutover to live running scheduled for completion in the last quarter of 2000.
The system runs on the Sun Solaris platform, with the main server being based at the hub of Commerzbank’s risk management operations in Frankfurt. GM/RV will eventually cover all the bank’s trading transactions, from money markets to derivatives.
Frank Müller, VP and global head of investment banking credit - methodology and systems, comments: "Because we have a number of different systems installed to support the wide variety of instruments traded by the bank, it was important that our risk management solution was flexible enough to interface with these other systems and consolidate all the transactions within a single, integrated database."
More than 10 different front and back-office packages will be interfaced to GM/RV, including a third-party market risk engine and the Summit System solution used by the bank’s investment banking arm to process trades in interest rate derivatives and other treasury instruments.
MKI is also custom-building a Web-based pre-deal limit checking facility, in line with German regulations requiring real-time limit checking prior to trade execution.
The new front end is being developed using the latest platform-independent Java technology. Says Müller: "Roll-out of the new front-end will be very much faster, as well as being much easier to customise the client workstation to satisfy individual needs and preferences. A Web-based front-end for pre-deal limits checking will also be less expensive in terms of maintenance and will eliminate the complexities involved in version control across our global network."