SAS to help Union Bank with Basel II compliance

CARY, NC . – Compliance with Basel II regulation has fueled an evolution of risk management programs within the financial services industry. Union Bank, N.A., has selected SAS, the leader in business analytics software and services, to help manage risk more efficiently and profitably.

When Union Bank needed to comply with Basel II, the organization determined that SAS® Credit Scoring for Banking could help generate, deploy, validate and monitor critical risk models in an integrated, auditable and flexible platform.

“SAS offered very powerful modeling capabilities and came highly recommended by other banks,” said Hans Helbekkmo, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Wide Risk, Union Bank. “With SAS in place, Union Bank will have better consistency, efficiency and transparency in regards to its risk management program. Our project risk is significantly reduced since the program is now standardized on one solution.”

SAS Credit Scoring for Banking combines SAS software’s award-winning data management, analytic and reporting capabilities to provide a powerful in-house credit scoring solution. This solution allows lenders to develop, validate, deploy and track credit scorecards faster, more affordably and more flexibly than any outsourcing alternative. Additionally, SAS Credit Scoring for Banking is also designed to automate the model development and validation process, increasing the time spent on “reviewing analytic insights” versus time spent on “reviewing data.”

With more than 30 years of experience in financial services, SAS works closely with top financial institutions to provide timely solutions that address critical business needs. SAS data integration, fraud detection, risk management, regulatory compliance, customer intelligence and other software are used by more than 3,100 financial institutions worldwide (96 percent of banks in the FORTUNE Global 500®). Furthermore, financial services is SAS’ largest industry segment by revenue, contributing 42 percent of the total company revenue of $2.26 billion in 2008.