SAS, the leader in business intelligence, today underscored its continued commitment to the financial services industry by announcing plans for additional solutions related to compliance, including new, upcoming solutions focused on fraud, broker surveillance and lending regulations.
"For more than a quarter-century, financial services organisations have turned to SAS to solve their unique business pains," said Dr Jim Goodnight, the company's president and CEO. "With this domain expertise, SAS understands that financial services institutions face tremendous pressures - including the need to comply with ever-changing regulations, achieve effective marketing and combat fraud, among other key concerns. We strive to deliver the intelligence they need to meet these demands and excel in a very competitive industry by providing unmatched software technology - such as data management and predictive analytics - that forms the basis for all our compliance solutions. SAS is the only software vendor that can meet an institution's entire compliance needs."
Anti-money laundering is just the beginning
US financial institutions alone will spend a total of $695 million on software and hardware through 2005 to comply with the USA Patriot Act, according to projections by Celent Communications in its September 2002 report, "Anti-Money Laundering: A Brave New World for Financial Institutions". With the broadening of anti-money laundering regulations, such as the USA Patriot Act and European Union regulations, institutions are looking for ways to reduce costs by leveraging software to address many types of transaction-monitoring needs. With this software, they can convert potential regulatory burdens into competitive advantages.
Building on SAS Anti-Money Laundering announced in September 2002, SAS is developing additional solutions aimed at helping banks and other financial institutions comply with new regulatory requirements.
Recognising that to protect an institution's well-being, monitoring employee behaviour is just as important as monitoring customer activity, SAS will offer a solution for broker surveillance later this year. This solution will provide robust capabilities for detecting, understanding, and reporting risky behaviour. Closely following this will be a comprehensive solution for fraud detection. SAS is also developing an application to address lending regulations that will help financial institutions meet requirements of such legislation as the US Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. This Act mandates that financial institutions in the United States report public loan data. This solution will also be available in the latter part of this year.
Financial services an important market for SAS
Tapping more than a quarter-century of experience in financial services, SAS works closely with more than 2 000 financial institutions worldwide to provide timely solutions that address their critical business needs. Customers include 61 of the 62 banks listed in the Fortune Global 500 and leading companies such as AXA Financial, Barclays Bank, Dreyfus, Hang Seng Bank, ING Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and US Bancorp.
Both SAS Anti-Money Laundering and the forthcoming compliance solutions are built on an industry-specific, integrated and open-ended architecture. This foundation combines leading analytical and data management technology to facilitate strategic and operational decision-making and regulatory compliance while integrating with solutions that assist across the enterprise. Financial institutions can adjust this framework to satisfy other needs including fraud, customer relationship management, operational efficiency and risk. For example, the same common, underlying data model is the basis for SAS Banking Intelligence Solutions and SAS Insurance Intelligence Solutions, which focus on meeting the needs of customer profitability for the financial services industry.
"The industry intelligence data model and framework that SAS provides for the financial services industry demonstrates market expertise and on-target capabilities for addressing specific business pains, such as regulatory compliance," said Mark Moorman, vice-president of the financial services practice at SAS. "The nature of financial services requires managing complex, dispersed and continually evolving data sources. SAS empowers institutions with the ability to retrieve crucial information from these sources, turn it into usable knowledge and successfully act on that intelligence."
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In addition to its anti-money laundering solution, SAS also helps banks and other financial services companies address regulations ranging from Basel II to financial reporting.
To address the capital adequacy requirements of the Basel II accord, SAS Risk Management for Banking (www.sas.com/industry/banking/risk/) helps banks in Europe, North America and elsewhere manage credit, market and operational risk effectively. With SAS, these institutions can maintain the maximum amount of working capital available for lending and other purposes while still meeting Basel II requirements.
In the wake of recent financial and accounting scandals, companies in all industries, including financial services, face increased requirements for financial transparency. These new regulations have emerged from the International Accounting Standards and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US. Both SAS Financial Management Solutions (www.sas.com/solutions/financial)and SAS Strategic Performance Management (www.sas.com/solutions/spm) help institutions organise and analyse financial and other data from across their enterprises. SAS transforms the data into the financial intelligence that institutions need to demonstrate financial integrity and to gain a firm handle on information that enables them to compete and succeed in a challenging economic environment.
The announcement of the forthcoming compliance solutions for financial services firms was made at the 21st annual SAS European Users Group International (Seugi) conference, attended by thousands of SAS customers and staff from around the world.
SAS
SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 40 000 sites - including 90% of the Fortune 500 - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organisations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For more than 25 years, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know. Visit us at www.sas.com.
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