Software Company Sets New Standard for Credit Risk Management by Lenders

July 26, 2012 - PRLog -- Credit Expo Ltd, an Irish software company, headquartered at NovaUCD, has today announced the launch of its ground-breaking ECM Analytics software system to measure and analyse credit risk in lending institutions. NovaUCD is the centre for new ventures and entrepreneurs at University College Dublin (UCD).

Credit Expo’s ECM Analytics (Empirical Credit Risk Management), a patented software system, measures and analyses credit risk on a continuous basis and promises to become the new standard for credit risk management in financial institutions.

For individual lenders the ECM Analytics product provides transparency of their own risk experience in terms of loan types, maturities, loan approvers and loan referral sources.
It empowers the lender, either to avoid the risk entirely or, if acceptable, to mitigate that risk and to price it appropriately.

Along with the roll-out of the product into the Irish market, Credit Expo has recently engaged with foreign–based bank software providers for international distribution of ECM Analytics.

ECM Analytics is the combined result of doctoral studies by company founder, Patrick Shallow, at UCD’s Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and a series of pilot installations in Irish financial institutions.

ECM Analytics is a web-enabled software suite which directly analyses the credit risk experience of the individual lender. It calculates the lender’s loss forecast and its provision requirement, drilling down to the individual loans where, based on the lender’s own experience, it measures the risk premiums for different loan types and different loan maturities, thus eliminating any credit exposure surprises later on.

According to Patrick Shallow, founder, Credit Expo, “What is radically different about ECM Analytics is that it rejects the traditional and almost universal static spreadsheet risk model used by most lenders to estimate loss forecasts and provisions and which is, arguably, responsible for misinforming historic lending policies and pricing.” He added, “ECM Analytics takes a positive, liberal view of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), to assist lenders to measure risk before it becomes irretrievable, including calculating risk in the up-to-date accounts.”

Working in close association with the progressive Credit Union Development Association (CUDA), the Credit Union version of the product has been developed over the last two years and following successful piloting and validation, ECM Analytics is now being rolled out to the Irish Credit Union movement.  

Patrick Shallow, founder of Credit Expo, is a former senior banker with extensive experience of corporate and retail banking. He was Managing Director of the Metropolitan Building Society and, previously Deputy Managing Director of Chartered Trust Ireland. In South Africa he worked as economist with Standard Bank of SA, specialising in the analysis of Bank branch performance. He also established the specialist treasury and banking consultancy, Finalysis, which has offices in Dublin and London and which advises companies on all aspects of banking.

ENDS
26 July 2012

For further information contact Micéal Whelan, University College Dublin, Communications Manager (Innovation), e: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie, t: + 353 1 716 3712 or Declan Mooney, Commercial Director, Credit Expo, e: dmooney@creditexpo.ie, t: +353 1 716 3672.