The solutions, which are already used by five banks in the region, will now help three additional banks to achieve greater visibility of risk across the organization. This increasing focus on upgrading risk management infrastructures highlights a continued trend among European banks to enhance business models to address more diverse and widespread regulation.

POP Pankki, a Finnish co-operative banking network and Saastopankki, a Finnish savings banking group, will both implement SunGard's Ambit Asset and Liability Management (Ambit ALM) and Ambit Liquidity Risk to help support expanding risk management requirements in line with their growth objectives.

In an effort to facilitate the growth of their businesses, POP Pankki and Saastopankki will deploy their own risk management platforms, underpinned by Ambit ALM to assist them in delivering more control and greater visibility of interest rate and liquidity risk to help decrease risk and lower operating costs. The solutions will also help the banks perform both deterministic and stochastic analysis. Having their own end-to-end platforms will introduce heightened efficiency to these bank's operations and allow them to formulate a personalized risk strategy to help meet their specific needs.

Timo Hulkko, chief risk officer, POP Pankki, commented: "We know through experience that SunGard's risk solutions are best suited to our requirements. Installing our own instance of the software provides us with direct systems access to customize its usage based on our risk management needs. This increased control is a significant part of our growth strategy, as inevitably risk will rise as we expand our business and bring more co-operatives into the network. Our existing experience with SunGard, coupled with its impressive Finnish customer base in risk management, made it the obvious choice to support this venture."

Ålandsbanken, a universal bank headquartered in Finland, is also implementingng Ambit ALM and Ambit Liquidity Risk to help comply with local Finnish and Swedish regulations, improve liquidity risk and lower operating costs across the entire organization and its subsidiaries. The solutions will help Ålandsbanken manage both interest rate and liquidity risk across the bank's entire network, and also help the bank capture a complete view of the balance sheet. In addition, the Ambit solutions will help deliver automated, out-of-the-box reporting for liquidity capital and net stable funding ratios, while tailoring reporting for local compliance requirements.

Heli Huhtala, head of group treasury, Ålandsbanken, commented: "SunGard's risk and performance management customer base was an appealing factor in our search and we are confident that these solutions are best suited to our risk management and compliance requirements. Ambit ALM and Liquidity Risk give us the flexibility to address very specific local regulatory requirements and to help achieve wider risk management goals across our organization. New efficiencies through data integration and reporting will not only help us to better comply with current and future regulation, but will also help us to boost performance and enhance our competiveness."