Chartis Research report names SAS as category leader in Basel III technology

Oct. 8, 2012 - PRLog -- October 08, 2012

SAS®, the leading provider of business analytics software and services, has been named a category leader in a Chartis Research report entitled ‘Basel III Technology Solutions 2012.’ The company was placed in the leaders’ quadrant for meeting key standards like ‘completeness of offering’ and ‘market share potential.’ Last year, SAS witnessed risk technology sales growth by 23 per cent and 24 per cent of revenue was later invested in Research & Development (R&D).

The report, which was presented by Chartis Research, a leading research and advisory services firm focused exclusively on the risk technology market, covers technologies required for Basel III compliance and adaptation, including data models, flexible and real-time analytics, capital calculation engines and specific technology support for risk and finance integration, liquidity risk and counterparty credit risk.

“Category leaders are risk technology vendors that have the necessary depth and breadth of functionality, technology and content, combined with the organizational characteristics to capture significant market share,” said Peyman Mestchian, Managing Partner Chartis Research. “The existing success of SAS as a global Basel II solution provider and its recent investments in high-performance computing and risk analytics position it as a leader in the Basel III marketplace.”

Chartis reviewed SAS risk technology and solutions including SAS High-Performance Risk and SAS Risk Management for Banking, an enterprise solution addressing credit risk, market risk, asset liability management and firm wide risk. SAS Risk Management for Banking is built on an integrated data structure for all applications. Chartis noted SAS' strengths and differentiators as ‘data management and having a detailed banking data model’ for a consolidated view of risk.

SAS Detail Data Store, which is a banking-specific data model, provides information for the risk data warehouse. By eliminating or reducing data inconsistencies through comprehensive data management, SAS increases control over and ownership of risk management data.

Chartis reports that providers with a single platform offer increased efficiency, stating, ‘reducing IT expenditure is a common requirement across the financial services industry and therefore improving risk management while reducing cost is seen as the most sought after solution for many financial institutions.’ Another factor is the ‘inherent need to create a centralized high-quality risk or finance data repository, with common definitions and common structures and associated auditability.’

In addition, the Chartis report also highlighted the advantages of ‘in-memory analytics to support a real-time and on-demand approach to risk management’ within the SAS solution for use with on-demand stress testing, real-time aggregation for liquidity and counterparty credit risk areas. In regards to credit value adjustment (CVA), the report valued in-memory analytics for use with a real-time CVA data hub for incremental CVA updates, noting that ‘SAS CVA infrastructure is also open enough to respond to the changing requirements and allows users to move from the standardized approach to the advanced approach.’

“For financial services organizations to better manage regulatory risk in an integrated fashion, they must understand how risks are interlinked and how links affect business,” said David Rogers, Global Product Marketing Manager for Risk, SAS. “With SAS, firms fine-tune their enterprise risk management strategy to help address regulatory compliance and drive better business decisions.”

Aside from being named as category leader, the company has also revealed that its SAS Risk Management for Banking received the 'Risk Management Technology' award during this year's edition of the  'Innovation in Banking Technology Awards'  by The Banker, a leading monthly international financial affairs publication owned by The Financial Times Ltd.

“We are very proud of the recent achievements garnered by SAS, having been named category leader in Basel III technology and receiving the ‘Risk Management Technology’ at the Innovation in Banking Technology Awards. These wins are a testament to the strong commitment that SAS has placed in helping today’s companies and organizations in their move towards optimizing business opportunities,” concluded Shukri Dabaghi, General Manager, SAS Middle East.