Banks around the world face increasing pressure from internal and external stakeholders to improve risk management practices, comply with industry standards for valuation strategies and enhance transparency, all in an effort to avoid a repeat of the credit crisis. Regulators, meanwhile, point to incomplete, inconsistent and unreliable data as contributing factors to the financial crisis, and cite continuing inadequacies in this area as a major obstacle to more robust and efficient markets.

FINCAD provides financial institutions with independent valuations of their securities portfolios for all major asset classes including interest rate, foreign exchange, commodity, credit and equity derivatives, mortgage-backed securities, fixed income securities, and structured products. SAS Risk Management for Banking provides risk analyses functionality that allows users to leverage FINCAD's industry-standard pricing library.

Working together, FINCAD and SAS give firms:
• Comprehensive risk capabilities covering market, credit, operational, and firm-wide risk
• Access to one of the broadest cross-asset class derivatives and fixed income analytics libraries that uses industry-standard models
• Full disclosure of the data, models, analytics, and risk measures

"With the recent distress experienced by the financial markets, it's more imperative than ever that a comprehensive risk management approach evolves to mitigate firm-wide risks and exposures to help firms thrive," said David Rogers, SAS Global Product Manager for Risk. "SAS recognizes the need for firms to innovate and develop business supported by a complete risk framework of data management, risk analytics and risk information distribution effectively across the enterprise. By leveraging FINCAD within SAS Risk Management applications, we can help our clients meet the market demands for more complete and timely risk information by combining the strengths of the two companies."

"Independent valuation is a key requirement in today's marketplace," said Amar Budhiraja, Director, FINCAD Alliance Program. "The derivatives and fixed income valuations provided by FINCAD give banks the required level of independent valuation and transparency needed to meet stakeholder and regulatory requirements. Third-party solutions from leading vendors such as FINCAD and SAS provide banks with a more comprehensive risk management solution, enabling them to save significant time and money over developing the systems in-house, while giving them the scalability and flexibility they require."

Combining the strengths of SAS and FINCAD enables banks to develop effective risk policies that are designed to continuously manage a firm's risk-and-return profile and the capital required for long-term success.