Global financial services provider Barclays is using SAS, the leader in business analytics software and services, to consistently improve standards in how economic and regulatory capital is calculated and reported.
SAS has helped Barclays address the challenge of calculating capital, in line with revised internal and external methodology, across many of its business units. "We wanted to calculate both economic and regulatory capital for granular underlying assets across both retail and wholesale portfolios," says Rob Bishop, Head of Capital Systems Development for Barclays Global Retail Bank.
"SAS has enabled Barclays to calculate capital bottom up, providing better management information across many of its material portfolios. In addition, the SAS Business Intelligence suite has enabled efficient distribution of capital results via the Web."
Barclays required a solution that would support the transition from Basel I to Basel II.” Having a robust calculation engine that could cope with granular asset volumes across Barclays portfolios was paramount,” says Bishop. “SAS Credit Risk Management Solution enabled us to meet this objective and go further in addressing wider business requirements across our Retail, Corporate and Wealth Management divisions.”
Barclays currently holds 16 months of detailed asset information online in the SAS solution. Across economic and regulatory capital, this equates to 3 billion lines of data. “SAS enabled us to quickly and efficiently calculate capital consumption on the majority of those asset lines. As well as this calculation process, we continue to develop our capital reporting capability. Given the volumes of data, the recent introduction of a sophisticated, aggregated reporting mart means we can now offer more advanced analytical capability and trend analysis back to our portfolio management teams,” Bishop adds.
SAS Credit Risk Management and SAS Business Intelligence formed the core solution that went fully live towards the end of 2007. At this time, the deteriorating economic climate was already having an impact. “Even more awareness of capital consumption was required to support the management decisions that ultimately steered us through that time,” says Bishop. “By providing Barclays a timely and accurate window on capital demand, the SAS solution played an important role in supporting management of our capital position throughout the banking crisis.”
Ian Manocha, Managing Director of SAS UK and Ireland, states: “Even as the economy recovers, it remains vital that banks strengthen and optimally allocate their capital to manage risk. SAS helps Barclays to make important decisions at all levels within the organisation. Our software provides Barclays with an efficient mechanism to conduct activities such as risk-weighted asset analysis, in turn helping the bank to better manage its business strategy.”
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