SecondFloor is a specialist financial industry and ICT consultancy practice offering change management services and business solutions based on industry best practices and a proven project management approach that increases the effectiveness of its financial services clients. Now as an Actuate reseller, focusing on the EMEA financial services market, SecondFloor offers its clients Actuate's sophisticated reporting technology as a component of its risk management software and across its solutions portfolio.

Martin Knook, Managing Director Business Development of SecondFloor explains, "We have already used Actuate technology in a risk dashboard that we developed for an international financial services company. This Risk Dashboard provides the executive Board and the Supervisory Board of the company with information concerning aggregated risk of all business lines, together with increased visibility of complex reporting structures and support for a SOX-compliant audit process. The partnership ensures high quality software solutions with excellent reporting capabilities that meet our clients' demands."

Last December, the risk management solution ECAPS, built by SecondFloor and Algorithmics for ING Corporate Insurance Risk Management (CIRM), was awarded the prestigious 2007 Banking & Finance ICT Innovation award for the Netherlands. This annual award is presented by Banking & Finance, a European Platform for Financial Professionals.

ECAPS is a common platform for risk management; and pioneers the approach of applying "mass produced" replicating portfolios to risk management in insurance providing the ability to simultaneously update over 40 ING business units worldwide. The system and processes are auditable and SOX compliant. This environment of increased automation and control has enabled ING to publicly disclose economic capital results for the first time, to reduce risk-reporting time by 60%, and to allow instant access to global market risk data. It alsoo establishes a firm basis for upcoming Solvency II requirements and a potential platform to meet IFRS Phase II accounting requirements for insurers.

"We share a common vision and market specialisation with SecondFloor and it is a privilege to work with them to extend our respective footprints in the EMEA financial services market, "said Vincent De Gennaro, VP EMEA, Actuate. "SecondFloor has a long, proven track record of solutions and services innovation in financial services and is very sophisticated and selective about business reporting solutions. We look forward to teaming with SecondFloor to strengthen its BI capabilities and accelerate development of client solutions that create clear and measurable business benefits."

SecondFloor's Martin Knook responds, "Our partnership with Actuate will deliver significant benefits to us and our clients. "Actuate is not only the dominant BI provider in financial services, its technology is highly complementary with our existing risk solutions. Adopting Actuate as our standard BI solution will enhance and accelerate the growth of our current services, and it will help us to provide clients with innovative, high-value services."