SAS positioned in Leaders Quadrant for Basel II Risk Management Application Software Magic Quadrant

Evaluation based on completeness of vision and ability to execute

SYDNEY (Oct. 19, 2005) – SAS, the leader in business intelligence, has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Leaders Quadrant in the ‘Basel II Risk Management Application Software Magic Quadrant¹ report. According to the report, “leaders” are vendors that have a proven track record in Basel II vision and business investment, which indicates they are well-positioned for the future. Leaders do not necessarily offer the best products for every customer project, but they do provide solutions that offer relatively lower failure risk. Leaders in this market have paired advanced technology with broad offerings or have specific, rich functionality.

SAS solutions for credit risk management and operational risk management were evaluated by Gartner for this Magic Quadrant.

“Gartner collected data from Basel II customers and references, which we believe makes SAS’ position on the execution axis even more important – we not only have a vision and strategy, we consistently deliver on them,” said Peyman Mestchian, head of the risk intelligence practice for SAS in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. “SAS operates at both the platform and application levels and provides a truly end-to-end solution; the end-to-end nature of each solution is directly linked to our success in execution and delivery. Our solutions assist firms in moving beyond Basel II toward an integrated enterprise-risk management platform.”

Greg Monahan, Head of Risk Practice for SAS ANZ, believes that SAS' position is even stronger than the report suggests in the local market, where SAS has dominated amongst the major banks.  "Buyers should assess the quality, expertise and experience of the local implementation teams.  Locally, SAS has been able to comply with APRA guidelines, such as the introduction of LVR within the Standardised approach, within weeks of publication by APRA, despite the fact that the standards remain in draft.  It is this type of rapid response capability that further distinguishes the SAS offering." says Monahan.

Credit risk management solutions from SAS include SAS® Credit Risk Management and SAS® Risk Dimensions. SAS Credit Risk Management (http://www.sas.com/industry/fsi/credit) is an open, extensible environment for retail credit scoring, corporate credit rating and credit portfolio risk management. It enables organizations to quickly and accurately calculate critical risk measures, such as probability of default, exposure at default, credit migration, regulatory capital, risk-weighted assets, credit value at risk and economic capital. It is transparent and auditable, facilitating supervisory review both internally and by external regulators, as required by Basel II. SAS Risk Dimensions (http://www.sas.com/solutions/riskmgmt) a software solution for enterprise-wide risk management, provides risk data management and reporting and credit, market and operational risk analysis techniques that give an organization almost unlimited perspective on its risk position.

Operational risk management solutions from SAS (http://www.sas.com/industry/fsi/oprisk) include SAS® OpRisk Monitor, a Web-based application that collects, manages, tracks and reports information about operational loss events, key risk indicators, risk-assessment maps and control-assessment scores; SAS® OpRisk VaR, a sophisticated, yet user-friendly analytic VaR (Value at Risk) model that enables users to splice, dice, drill-down, adjust, trend and plot operational loss data at will, following a fully transparent, intuitive and sequential process; and SAS® OpRisk Global Data, a comprehensive database of external loss data that enriches the statistical sample used for modelling, documenting more than 10,000 publicly reported operational loss events of $1 million or more.

Many global banks already use SAS solutions for Basel II compliance, including: Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, one of Italy’s leading banking groups; ERSTE Bank Group, a leading bank in Central Europe that serves more than 11 million customers in Austria, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Hungary and Croatia; Grupo Santander, the eighth largest bank in the world by market capitalization; and Swedbank, one of the largest banking groups in the Nordic area.

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted September 16, 2005 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About 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 96 of the top 100 companies on the FORTUNE Global 500® -- to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations 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 nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know®. Visit us at www.sas.com.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2005 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.