SAS Positioned in the Leaders Quadrant for Basel II

SAS continued its momentum in the enterprise risk management space through strong customer growth and analyst evaluation. Currently, more than 140 financial services institutions use SAS® for credit risk and operational risk management – up 40 percent from March 2006. In addition, SAS was recently positioned by Gartner Inc. in the Leaders quadrant of the "Magic Quadrant for Basel II Software Applications, 2006" report.

Taking the Leaders Quadrant
According to the report, "the leaders quadrant tends to be occupied by vendors with integrated Basel II software application suites covering all the risk disciplines that have achieved a high level of market acceptance. These suites contribute to developing a common architectural approach and enable a consistent view of risk across the organization as compared to separately designed and implemented risk-calculation engines or reporting tools.

Such vendors are beginning to approach the market with a more comprehensive approach to ERM and its linkage to corporate performance management. They have robust organizational structures and professional services resources." Gartner's report evaluated SAS software's ability to execute and its completeness of vision.

SAS' customer list includes institutions such as:

• Bankdata (Denmark)
• Barclays (UK)
• BB&T (USA)
• Caisse Nationale des Caisses d'Epargne (France)
• Commerzbank (Germany)
• Grupo Santander (Spain)
• HypoVereinsbank  (Germany)
• Kookmin Bank (Korea)
• Landsbanki (Iceland)
• National Australia Group (Australia)
• Northern Rock (UK)
• Raiffeisen Zentralbank (Austria)
• Volkskreditbank AG (Austria)
• Vseobecna Uverova Banka (Slovakia)

From compliance to competitive advantage
Financial services firms are adopting risk management systems in response to government regulations and industry standards. SAS helps its customers to go beyond compliance and manage risk strategically through risk-based performance management. By doing so, firms can derive real business value from their compliance initiatives and exploit risk for maximum competitive advantage. Implementation of regulations such as the Basel II accord should be viewed as a step in the continuing process of improving risk management as part of an overall enterprisewide risk management initiative.

What SAS customers are saying
"Erste Bank has decided in favor of the SAS Risk Management solution," says Günther Krähan, Program Manager at Erste Bank. "With its standard industry solution, SAS delivers about 85 percent of our specific requirements for the risk-weighted assets calculation. Also the accompanying SAS support during implementation is most professional."

"SAS' customers supplied information to Gartner for its Magic Quadrant report," says Peyman Mestchian, SAS' Director of Risk Management in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. "We believe the results testify to SAS' vision, execution and long-term vendor viability. We feel that we are best positioned to service this market with our comprehensive risk management offering, which includes both platform and application levels that delivers integrated, enterprisewide risk intelligence."

"The SAS credit risk framework allows us to measure and manage our risk data faster and more accurately," says Peter De Neer, Risk Manager at Fortis Lease (Belgium). "And this is fully in line with both the Basel II accord and our pan-European scope."