Piraeus Bank Group balances credit risk, achieves cost and time savings with SAS®

In today's turbulent economy, rigorous and accurate credit risk management is critical to mitigating exposure. That's why Piraeus Bank Group uses SAS Credit Scoring for Banking. With SAS, the bank has streamlined and automated the way it collects and manages risk data, optimizes model development, and produces reports with greater speed and accuracy. The result? Cost and time savings – and continued vitality even in hard times

Piraeus Bank Group - one of Greece’s most dynamic and active financial institutions - comprises a network of companies that cover all financial and banking activities in Greece.  While it has a growing presence in the global financial centers of London and New York, Piraeus Bank Group’s activities are focused in Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean region.

Processing and integrating data from the bank's core systems with separate platforms posed challenges for Piraeus Bank Group's risk team, says Toula Efthymiou, Director of Credit Risk and Capital Management. Managing credit risk and providing optimum management of the bank's capital resources – the primary duties of her division – became even more challenging when Greece's economy suffered a brutal hit at the outset of the global recession.

Better analytics in 30 percent less time
Despite Greece's economic woes, Piraeus Bank Group has managed to strengthen its position in the market. Implementing automated credit scoring resulted in cost and time savings, and laid the foundation for more-informed decision support.

"With SAS, we have achieved significant economies of scale in terms of resources, personnel cost and time," Efthymiou says. "As an example, we can now implement a statistical analysis at least 30 percent faster than before. Additionally, at an economic analysis level, the process is now far less time consuming."

Growing business, despite the economy
With the recession, Piraeus Bank Group knew that it was more important than ever to shield itself from too much credit exposure that could result in higher default rates and charge-off percentages.

The bank sought a technology solution that would quickly and accurately support decisions to maintain the right level of exposure to avoid losing business and revenue.

With SAS, Piraeus Bank Group now has an automated credit-scoring solution that streamlines reporting processes for faster distribution of more accurate decision-critical intelligence, says Efthymiou. The solution provides a single platform for statistical analysis and data mining, data collection and management, reporting and model development.

As a result, Efthymiou adds, Piraeus Bank Group has strengthened its already pre-eminent position in Greece's banking system.

Analytics with a view
"SAS has provided us an integrated environment to totally control credit risk," Efthymiou says. "Now we can perform data mining, sophisticated statistical analysis and model development quickly and accurately in order to assess and control risk within existing credit portfolios. Moreover, through enterprise data access and collection, as well as predictive analysis, we'll get a better understanding of the specific risk characteristics and subsequent attributes of our customers' profiles that lead to delinquency, default, and ultimately, bad debt."

Efthymiou's division is using SAS to develop and implement methodologies that connect credit performance with economic cycle status and characteristics. This capability allows the bank to manage credit cycles proactively, according to current economic and business conditions.

Efthymiou says her employees have embraced their SAS solution, delighted with its user-friendliness and speed. And they are eager to expand their existing platform know-how. In fact, by exploring the new analytics modules in the solution, some users have discovered new insights within the data that enable faster decision support for senior managers.

"With the success we've had so far," Efthymiou says, "I foresee using the solution in the bank's other divisions."

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

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