Measuring and Managing Your Risk Exposure

Regulatory measures such as the New Basel Capital Accord (Basel II) have made operational risk a top concern for financial institutions as they look for ways to measure and manage their risk exposure. To meet the growing need for risk management controls, SAS is releasing SAS OpRisk Monitor, a Web-based application that collects, manages, tracks and reports information about operational loss events, key risk indicators, and risk and control assessments.

Following the acquisition of OpRisk Analytics in 2003 (see related press release), SAS further underscored its commitment to the risk management market by developing SAS OpRisk Management, a comprehensive solution that helps organizations mitigate operational risk across the enterprise.

As part of the SAS OpRisk Management portfolio, SAS OpRisk Monitor is designed to automate the processes for managing all internal operational risk information through a user-friendly process within a single system. The software facilitates the entry, collection, transfer, storage, analysis, tracking and reporting of operational loss events, key risk performance indicators, risk assessment results and control assessment scores drawn from multiple locations across an organization.

Société Générale Group, one of the largest financial services groups in the Eurozone, selected SAS for its operational risk management needs. "Operational risk management is still evolving. SAS’ industry expertise, solution scalability and its continued investment in this area was a key factor in our decision to select SAS as the standard for operational risk management across the entire Société Générale Group," says Martine Tribulet, project manager for Basel II/operational risk at Société Générale Group.

"Effectively monitoring and controlling internal operational risks is a strategic issue for us. We wanted a best-practice solution that could take us beyond regulatory compliance," says Tribulet. "We are working closely with SAS on developing an integrated solution that fully supports our quantitative and qualitative approach to the management of operational risk. By identifying the business benefits of op risk management at an early stage, Société Générale will enjoy a competitive advantage in the lead up to the Basel II deadline."

SAS OpRisk Monitor is a unified application that supports both a quantitative and qualitative approach to managing operational risk, following the current best practices and methodologies adopted by SAS customers. The solution helps financial institutions:

• Develop an internal collection of operational risk losses and events – a capability unique to the SAS solution.
• Assess operational risk and control through continuous monitoring and oversight of all relevant risk information with comprehensive and integrated reporting.
• Collect, monitor and analyze key risk indicators with superior SAS analytics.
• Adhere to an advanced measurement approach for Basel II compliance.

"The out-of-box reporting and enterprisewide delivery of results from SAS OpRisk Monitor ensure that the right people have the most accurate risk information for strategic decision making," says Sam Harris, SAS global strategist for operational risk. "Also, SAS OpRisk Monitor’s dashboard capability arms executives with better enterprise risk planning to help them manage and optimize their organization’s overall performance."

In March, SAS demonstrated its continued commitment and investment in the operational risk management space by announcing the first comprehensive operational risk training program in the industry (see related press release).

"SAS is committed to developing risk solutions and support services that specifically target business pains of our customers," says Peyman Mestchian, director of the SAS EMEA risk management practice. "SAS is unique in its ability to help organizations leverage the same data platform used by the operational risk solution to manage corporate governance requirements, such as through SAS Financial Intelligence."