Regulatory measures like the New Basel Accord (Basel II) have made operational risk a top concern for financial institutions, which are now looking for ways to measure and manage their risk exposure.
To meet the growing need for risk management controls, SAS, the leader in business intelligence, today announced SAS OpRisk Monitor, a Web-based application that collects, manages, tracks and reports information about operational loss events, key risk indicators, and risk and control assessments.
Following the acquisition of OpRisk Analytics in 2003, SAS further underscored its commitment to the risk management market by developing SAS OpRisk Management, a comprehensive solution that helps organizations mitigate operational risk across the enterprise. As part of the SAS OpRisk Management portfolio, SAS OpRisk Monitor is designed to automate the processes for managing all internal operational risk information through a user-friendly process within a single system. The software facilitates the entry, collection, transfer, storage, analysis, tracking and reporting of operational loss events, key risk performance indicators, risk assessment results and control assessment scores drawn from multiple locations across an organization.
Societe Generale Group, one of the largest financial services groups in the Eurozone, selected SAS for its operational risk management needs. "Operational risk management is still evolving SAS' industry expertise, solution scalability and its continued investment in this area was a key factor in our decision to select SAS as the standard for operational risk management across the entire Societe Generale Group," said Martine Tribulet, project manager for Basel II/operational risk at Societe Generale Group.
"Effectively monitoring and controlling internal operational risks is a strategic issue for us. We wanted a best-practice solution that could take us beyond regulatory compliance," said Tribulet. "We are working closely with SAS on developing an integrated solution that fully supports our quantitative and qualitative approach to the management of operational risk. By identifying the business benefits of op risk management at an early stage, Societe Generale will enjoy a competitive advantage in the lead-up to the Basel II deadline."
SAS OpRisk Monitor is a unified application that supports both a quantitative and qualitative approach to the management of operational risk, following the current best practices and methodologies adopted by SAS customers. The solution helps financial institutions:
- Develop an internal collection of operational risk losses and events - a capability unique to the SAS solution.
- Assess operational risk and control through continuous monitoring and oversight of all relevant risk information with comprehensive and integrated reporting.
- Collect, monitor and analyze key risk indicators with superior SAS analytics.
- Adhere to an advanced measurement approach for Basel II compliance.
SAS OpRisk Monitor
SAS OpRisk Monitor is supported by SAS' proven business intelligence and analytic expertise, which helps organizations gather, store, analyze and distribute information more quickly than ever before. The power of SAS analytics provides an advanced measurement approach for Basel II compliance and enables accurate determination of key risk factors. The reduced implementation time of SAS OpRisk Monitor delivers quick results and rapid return on investment.
"The out-of-box reporting and enterprise-wide delivery of results from SAS OpRisk Monitor ensures that the right people have the most accurate risk information for strategic decision making," said Sam Harris, SAS global strategist for operational risk. "Also, SAS OpRisk Monitor's dashboard capability arms executives with better enterprise risk planning to help them manage and optimize their organization's overall performance."
In March, SAS demonstrated its continued commitment and investment in the operational risk management space by announcing the first comprehensive operational risk training program in the industry.
"SAS is committed to developing risk solutions and support that specifically target business pains of our customers," said Peyman Mestchian, director of the SAS EMEA risk management practice. "SAS is unique in its ability to help organizations leverage the same data platform used by the operational risk solution to manage corporate governance requirements, such as through SAS Financial Intelligence."
SAS OpRisk Monitor is part of the broader SAS Risk Intelligence offering, which supports all aspects of enterprise risk management. SAS Risk Intelligence provides an integrated platform of comprehensive solutions focused on creating enterprise transparency and managing risk to increase revenue, control capital and lower the total cost of ownership for credit, market and operational risk and for compliance. Tapping SAS' proven strength in data management, SAS Risk Intelligence offers a consolidated view of all risk and compliance information, enabling more timely, accurate and effective risk management.