Academic initiative alleviating IT skills crisis

An academic initiative by SA's leading business intelligence software company is producing highly qualified risk analysis graduates, alleviating the IT skills crisis, and generating a wealth of risk management knowledge and innovation.

Five years ago, expertise in risk analysis and management was extremely limited in SA. Then in 2000, SAS Institute launched the SAS RiskLab within the Centre for Business Mathematics and Informatics (BMI) at North-West University (then Potchefstroom University).

Established in 1997 (as a joint initiative between Absa and the university), the Centre for BMI is a centre of excellence in financial risk/reward management and analysis. Its mission is to train students for professional careers in the area, and conduct research that would benefit the financial services industry and, in particular, the banking industry.

The SAS RiskLab student projects have ranged from implementation of a retail credit portfolio model, on-the-job training of employees on the use of cluster analysis for customer segmentation, and statistical evaluation of the Lifetime Customer Value model.

The Centre for BMI has also produced a number of research reports, many of which have been accepted for publication in international journals. According to Murray de Villiers, Manager: Alliances of SAS, many of the algorithms developed are new, and could potentially be marketed as new SAS procedures internationally.

To date, the SAS RiskLab has trained 54 students, with the number of students studying on SAS courses rising from four in 2001 to 28 in 2004. So highly prized are these students that banks are using them to help roll-out risk applications within their organisations, and more than half of them have job offers before they even qualify.