FinArch, international software provider of integrated reporting, finance and risk solutions, announced today that one of the largest banking groups in the world has implemented Financial Studio as a strategic part of its innovative financial transformation project.
One of the world's largest banks by assets has chosen Financial Studio to form the strategic part of its financial transformation programme, set up to remodel its entire finance and reporting process. The solution is currently in production in Singapore and Hong Kong, and will be rolled out further in 4 more countries by the end of this year. In the coming years, the programme will run in over 20 countries worldwide.
The banking group is implementing FinArch's event based accounting engine and ledger solution, part of the Financial Studio suite. FinArch's accounting module provides a multi-entity, multi-GAAP, multi-currency and multi-period ledger. As a strategic part of the transformation project, Financial Studio captures data from the central systems in the bank's head office in London, and makes these compliant in a structured and automated environment to meet regulatory, statutory, tax and other reporting requirements.
FinArch's ledger consolidates all source feeds, passes local GAAP journals, and generates automated reconciliation reports. In addition, it addresses data quality issues where upstream fixes are not possible, and it generates compliant files for the Reporting Data Mart. As a result, FinArch's ledger solution provides the bank with timely, granular and more accurate reporting. Internal reporting comprises information on the bank's net income, sub ledger and trial balance for the bank's senior management, financial management group, and accounting. The ledger solution lies on a foundation built on a financial data architecture supporting both risk and financial data.
The banking group also runs Financial Studio's event based accounting engine to generate accounting entries from transactions which existing systems do not provide and to execute balance sheet transfers to fulfill the dynamic reporting requirements of both bank management and the regulators.
Reduction of manual entries and the automatic of reconciliation are just some of the benefits of FinArch's solution. Additionally, improved workflow and efficiency within the bank's accounting division are achieved, as the focus is less on data capture and more on analysis and control. FinArch's solution also features full audit trail and drill back functionalities which facilitate the tracking of data changes from report back to the source.
FinArch's software is built using a three tier architecture model based upon Microsoft SQL Server as the core database and application server, and Microsoft Internet Information Server as the web server. The application is fully configurable and includes built-in security modules which integrate with Microsoft Active Directory, data auditing capabilities and business rules engine for accounting event generation and posting.
"Microsoft and FinArch help financial institutions manage risk and meet compliance needs with solutions that automate and simplify governance, compliance and risk management," says Joe Pagano, Managing Director, Banking and Capital Markets, Worldwide Financial Services, Microsoft. "Over the past several years, we have worked diligently to become best-of-breed in the areas of scalability, reliability and availability of our operating systems, application servers and development tools. As the success of FinArch clearly demonstrates, Microsoft, with our industry partners, delivers mission-critical solutions that allow the world's leading financial services firms to mitigate risk and meet regulatory and other critical reporting requirements."
Chris Puype, co-founder, COO and Director of Asia at FinArch, states: "We are obviously very pleased that one of the largest banks in the world has selected Financial Studio as the central part of their leading-edge project. With the innovation and technology that only FinArch can deliver, we can support global financial institutions in their financial transformation process, and empower them to make faster, more informed decisions and so generate more accurate reports." Puype continues: "To achieve this, full automation from "event to disclosure" supporting multi-GAAPS, enhanced data quality, and audit and drill back functionalities are key."