KUALA LUMPUR, August 24, 2009 - Bank Islam, Malaysia’s premier Shariah-based financial institution today signed a partnership agreement with SAS Malaysia to elevate and enhance its bank-wide risk management system.
The partnership will see SAS provide business analytics that will contribute to Bank Islam’s competitive advantage through more effective and efficient management of credit, market and operational risk exposures. Ultimately, it is expected to enhance Bank Islam’s position as Malaysia’s leading Islamic financial institutions with complete adherence to global Shari’ah regulatory standards
According to Jimmy Cheah, Managing Director of SAS Malaysia, the partnership demonstrates the growing reputation of Islamic banking and the need to provide customers industry-leading and relevant solutions.
“Malaysia has been profiling itself as a global Islamic hub since 1983 and there has been tremendous uptake particularly in the past few years. Since the recent global financial meltdown, investors are leaning more towards Islamic banking for a more prudent alternative. In meeting these demands, SAS’ Risk Intelligence Solutions will allow Bank Islam to meet its risk management needs – reducing operational risks and optimising efficiency – while achieving adherence to regulatory compliances expected of an Islamic financial institution.”
In addition to being Bank Islam’s technology partner of choice, SAS Malaysia will provide Bank Islam the tools needed to meet their strategic objectives: to address the need to manage integration, collaboration and data synchronization between applications in a seamless, error-proof and efficient manner, one that is critical at a time when the government is calling for careful measurement of Key Performance Indicators.
Jeroen Thijs, Bank Islam’s Chief Risk Officer, said: “This partnership is an important step forward for Bank Islam, as this allows us to capitalize on relevant Risk Intelligence Solutions and move the Bank towards further sophistication of its risk management framework. Bank Islam is committed to the highest levels of innovation as a vehicle towards establishing Malaysia as a global Islamic finance hub.”
SAS Malaysia will provide select Risk Intelligence Solutions that will help Bank Islam to embed risk management into everyday processes at all levels of the organisation. The risk management systems will therefore enhance strategic decision making and risk mitigation through timely detection and proactive risk monitoring.
The system will be implemented using a two-phase approach, to ensure that the most critical requirement of automated delivery of Capital Adequacy reports to BNM (CAFIB) is completed and delivered in five months, by mid January 2010. This includes the highly critical establishment of a bank-wide risk data mart, which forms the foundation for implementing additional risk functionalities in the future. Upon completion of Phase 1, SAS will implement the internal credit risk analysis reporting engine. This is expected to take three months to complete.
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