SAS Australia & New Zealand

Sydney, Australia (July 10, 2007) – Chartis Research has positioned SAS as an established leader for credit risk in “Credit Risk Management Systems 2007.” According to the report, SAS® Credit Risk Management for Banking is a key player in the areas of functionality, flexible technology architecture, and scalable sales and marketing strategy, emphasizing SAS’ strength in data management, flexible analytics, global presence, business intelligence, and financial stability and size.

The Chartis report, which updates the company’s 2006 “Credit Risk Management Systems – Basel II and Beyond,” predicts a major surge toward integrated credit risk management in 2008, peaking in 2010-2011. The report covers key market and regulatory requirements, implementation challenges and the competitive landscape. According to Chartis, established leaders such as SAS have capitalized on Basel II, upgrading or extending their offerings to related areas and sustaining growth by leveraging their customer bases to move beyond Basel II.

"This comprehensive research leads Chartis to conclude that SAS Credit Risk for Banking is amongst the strongest offerings available in the retail banking sector. This is due to a flexible technology architecture, flexible analytics, global presence and support,” said Helen Townsley, research director at Chartis Research. “Chartis considers SAS to be an established leader in the credit risk enterprise software market."

“Being recognized by Chartis as an established leader for credit risk management further underscores SAS’ goal of empowering organizations to not only meet Basel II requirements but simultaneously achieve enterprise risk management and superior performance management,” said David Rogers, SAS’ Global Product Marketing Manager for Risk.

SAS Credit Risk Management for Banking, which integrates data aggregation, analytics and reporting within a transparent framework, provides an open, extensible environment with complete capabilities for retail credit scoring, corporate credit rating and credit portfolio risk management. The solution is transparent and auditable, facilitating supervisory review, both internally and by regulators, as required by Basel II and other regulations. The underlying credit risk data model helps firms consolidate credit data from disparate sources and supports faster implementation.

Chartis Research recently ranked SAS as the leader for the third consecutive year in its “Operational Risk Management Systems 2007” report.

More than 200 financial services institutions use SAS for credit risk and operational risk management, including: Bankdata (Denmark), BB&T (USA), Caisse Nationale des Caisses d’Epargne (France), Commerzbank (Germany), Grupo Santander (Spain), HSBC (UK), HypoVereinsbank (Germany), Kookmin Bank (Korea), Landsbanki (Iceland), Northern Rock (UK), Raiffeisen Zentralbank (Austria), Volkskreditbank AG (Austria), Vseobecna Uverova Banka (Slovakia) and Woori Bank (Korea).

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business intelligence and analytical software and services. Customers at 43,000 sites use SAS software to improve performance through insight from data, resulting in faster, more accurate business decisions; more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; compliance with governmental regulations; research breakthroughs; and better products and processes. Only SAS offers leading data integration, storage, analytics and business intelligence applications within a comprehensive enterprise intelligence platform. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know® .