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In today's economy, CFOs are challenged with making strategic decisions with trusted data located in disparate areas of their organizations -- using data sets from both inside and outside their companies. They are managing people, systems and technology infrastructure in a time of great regulatory scrutiny. This is in addition to the role of CFOs as corporate scorekeepers, ensuring all risk and accounting functions are accurately reported.

"CFOs are now acting as agents to identify new growth opportunities and manage strategic shifts in their companies' business models.  To help with this shift, companies are rethinking their use of data and analytics to attain a more holistic view of their portfolio, and to get a single view of their customers and related risk exposures," said Wayne Wilczynski, Global Risk and Regulatory Compliance Leader, IBM. "IBM's new solution can provide insights to improve credit risk decisions and significantly advance an instrumented, integrated view for CFOs."

Despite increased productivity in the face of regulatory pressures, some financial organizations are still relying on siloed and manual wholesale credit systems and processes to fulfill risk management responsibilities. These processes do not provide financial management with the integrated, timely information they need to proactively manage risk and optimize capital.

Visualizing the Bigger Picture

Achieving enterprise risk management for wholesale credit requires that firms with isolated credit risk solutions move to an integrated system built on a consistent data infrastructure. Increasingly, as enterprise risk is managed across a team of C-suite executives including the CFO, CRO, CSO and COO, businesses are showing increased demand for solutions that provide an aligned view of risk.

The IBM Signature Solution provides a single view of customer and credit exposures that increases visibility and access to consistent information, providing management with the information they need, in a way that can be easily understood, on a timely basis. By aggregating and analyzing credit data from dozens of sources, the solution helps clients improve customer profitability, manage risk of loss, and have a better view into key capital management decisions.

IBM helped a major bank unify its credit risk exposure strategy for its wholesale lines of business with this new solution. Prior to deploying it, the management of credit risk was extremely difficult, often requiring four to five business days to aggregate more than 150 systems for a single entity. The complex process produced information and reporting challenges which comprised the accuracy of risk reporting.

With the global deployment of the IBM solution, the bank has empowered more than 1,000 users across multiple processing centers to have a unified view into credit risk management data.  The visibility to consistent information resulted in a dramatic error reduction and correction, while significantly improving the accuracy of capital projections and management of customer profitability. Risk management owners can now see the entire risk associated with a customer/counter-party at the push of a button. Information that would take one week to produce before can now be generated daily.

IBM also helped a major payments company replace its homegrown system with a flexible and scalable enterprise risk solution. After installing it, the payments company can more accurately measure and report on credit exposure.  The solution serves as a single repository for industry and client information.

IBM has been named a leader in governance, risk and compliance (GRC) consulting within a new IDC Marketscape on Worldwide Business Consulting Services for GRC Vendor Analysis report (Doc# 242352 Aug 2013). According to a report issued on August 16, IBM is recognized as a leader at helping clients manage risk, integrating appropriate analytics into an engagement, and maximizing the value of a project.

This solution draws upon IBM's decades of experience helping clients address key industry challenges by delivering services that range from strategy development to solution implementation.  IBM Signature Solutions provide clients with end-to-end support that includes change management, data integration and software implementation.  The IBM Signature Solution – risk management features advanced software, powerful hardware, a Big Data platform, as well as access to leading risk experts and business analytics and optimization services.

The IBM Signature Solution – risk management provides C-suite decision-makers with a consolidated view of a company's credit activities to provide more control over the paths to risk adjusted profitability within a business.  The solution helps evolve risk management into a strategic function within an organization for differentiation and competitive advantage.

For more details about IBM's Signature Solutions please visit: http://www.ibm.com/analytics/us/en/solutions/business-need/

CONTACT:
Pasha Ray Dahncke
IBM Media Relations
914-765-6148
Cell: 646-342-4013
bipasha@us.ibm.com

SOURCE IBM