United Bank Limited forges strategic partnership with SAS to help manage enterprise risk

Feb. 21, 2013 - PRLog -- SAS®, the leading provider of business analytics software and services, has announced the signing of a strategic new partnership with United Bank Limited (UBL), one of the leading banking institutions in Pakistan, as part of the bank’s move to implement a more effective and improved enterprise risk management system. The alliance complements the ongoing positive changes being witnessed across Pakistan's banking industry, like the introduction of internet, mobile banking and ATMs. Looking to play a significant role across these developments, UBL will utilize SAS Credit Risk Management for Banking, Market Risk & Operational Risk, in order to establish a high performance risk framework that can help them adopt more banking best practices into their operations, improve ratings, reduce finance costs, effect a faster way to generate feedback from loan applications and continuously comply with BASEL II requirements.

UBL bank is planning to harness SAS’ cutting edge analytics, sophisticated data management and reporting—capabilities that have been deemed essential for banking operational functions like risk reporting and the creation of timely reports for regulatory authorities. Aside from maintaining compliance with BASEL II regulations, forward thinking banks like UBL have strived for key ways to achieve business benefits within a comprehensive risk management strategy. Through the partnership, UBL will now be able to use SAS Credit Risk Management for Banking, Market Risk & Operational Risk to develop custom scorecards and credit risk models rapidly; investigate existing portfolio and analyze new applicants; accurately model capital requirements; optimize UBLs mix of customers in its portfolio and maintain a complete audit trail. Use of this SAS software can greatly enhance UBL’s application scoring, customer behaviour analytics while also effectively managing data for better decision making.

“Our partnership with UBL reflects our drive to help solve customer business problems and our shared commitment to a successful future. UBL is a strong growing bank with requirements for a world-class solution that is scalable in relation to their expansion.  SAS has proven solution expertise in more than 3,100 financial institutions worldwide and a reputation of working closely with customers, understanding the requirements and providing highly effective customized solutions. We are confident that our partnership with UBL will not only drive up productivity but also greatly improve efficiencies.”

The BASEL II framework has been intended to create an international standard for banking regulators to control how much capital banks need to put aside to guard against the types of financial and operational risks banks face. In line with this, BASEL II has set up risk and capital management requirements designed to ensure that a bank has adequate capital for the risk the bank exposes itself to through its lending and investment practices. Aiming to maintain continuous compliance with BASEL II standards, UBL will also integrate SAS for Enterprise Risk Management into its risk management procedures, which was previously separated from the bank's main business lines.

“We are confident that our alliance with UBL will play a significant role in their move to be more globally competitive. We intend to work closely with UBL and help them in anticipating business opportunities, empower action and drive impact through the use of advanced analytics--transforming customer, performance and financial data into more meaningful information,” concluded Khurram Yamin, Regional Sales Lead & Channel Partner Manager, North Gulf, Pakistan & Afghanistan, SAS Institute.