It is designed to help banks more effectively integrate critical risk information with revenue and expense planning data to maximise risk-adjusted return on capital.

The Cognos-IBM Risk Adjusted Profitability Blueprint provides a performance management framework that helps bank executives build precise multi-dimensional, product-level profitability plans and forecasts that are aligned with risk management strategies. This enables greater financial planning accuracy and building a critical connection between the finance and risk organisations.

"Banks today are challenged with striking a delicate balance between aggressively growing their business while controlling and minimising their risk exposure," said Kathleen Wilhide, research director, GRC and Financial Performance Management Solutions, at IDC. "Risk adjusted financial reporting provides another dimension to traditional financial metrics, and requires the integration of domain expertise and software capabilities to develop an automated solution. The co-developed blueprint embeds this expertise and delivers the opportunity for a quick-time-to-value implementation that should jumpstart risk adjusted profitability reporting integrated with much needed planning and forecasting capabilities."

"Banks require core banking systems that are integrated, open, flexible, scalable and secure," said June Yee Felix, general manager, banking solutions and strategy, IBM. "The integration of IBM's Banking Data Warehouse with Cognos 8 Planning and BI will help customers achieve a comprehensive, integrated view of their core banking business in order to drive increased profits and shareholder value. Together with Cognos, we have delivered a solution that can break down the traditional silos between risk and finance reporting to drive more value from existing information assets."

"IBM and Cognos share a common vision for providing cost-effective solutions that enable banks to identify, report on and analyse the costs of trade, performance, risk management, compliance and profitability, among others," said Laurence Trigwell, senior financial services director, Cognos. "Through this joint offering, banks will finally be able to synchronise profitability plans with relevant risk scenarios, minimising discrepancies between projected and actual financial results. This new Blueprint offers a significant head-start in helping banks boost profitability with a complete understanding of the credit and operational risks at play."