London, England, 2 November
2005 - Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken
AB ( SEB ), the major Scandinavian international
banking group, has contracted with Optial to
support its global Operational Risk Management
processes. SEB selected Optial following an
exhaustive competitive evaluation of every
leading operational risk management product.
SEB is deploying the Optial system over the
next nine months with a broad functional scope
that includes loss database, operational risk
self-assessments, key risk indicators, internal
control monitoring and policy distribution.
Approximately 21,000 SEB staff will use the
system across 20 countries in SEB ’s global
enterprise.
Philip Winckle, Head of Group Risk Control at
SEB said, “The nature of operational risk means
that although it makes up a small percentage
of our risk profile, it contains the unlikely
events that could potentially bring down the
entire bank. So it is essential to have an effective
reporting infrastructure to ensure the use of
the operational risk management tools and monitor
risk management processes, as well as make a
best estimate of the risks. Using Optial’s operational
risk software means that we will be able
to demonstrate clearly to the supervisor that
we are successfully meeting criteria for Basel
II AMA recognition”.
Lars Hansén, Head of Operational Risk at SEB
, agreed, adding, “We believe that the implementation
of operational risk management across the bank
requires a cultural acceptance of the processes
involved. It was vital to us that we chose a
scaleable system that was also flexible enough
to match the deep functionality we need, to fully
reflect our own methodologies across the different
divisions. It is equally important that we, as
a management team, can clearly see and understand
our risks and what is being done to address them.
The key words for us in the acquisition process
were functionality, flexibility, responsiveness
to our needs, proven workflow functionality and
that the supplier would have very capable project
management. Optial was the clear leader in meeting
these needs, and provides the right technology
and expertise to help us achieve our objectives
in this large scale implementation”.
Chris O’Brien, CEO of Optial, said, “It is apparent
that SEB has invested significant intellectual
capital into its approach to operational
risk management across the bank and needed
a platform that could support it in an economic
and efficient way. Optial’s system architecture
has been expressly designed to meet all of the
bank’s diverse requirements and to adapt to changing
regulatory and operating conditions with a minimum
of effort.”
About SEB
The SEB Group is
a North European financial group for corporate
customers, institutions and private individuals
with ten home markets in the Nordic and Baltic
countries, Germany , Poland and the Ukraine .
SEB has 680 branch offices and 5 million customers,
of whom approximately 2 million use the internet
for their banking transactions. The Group is
represented in some 20 countries around the world.
As a financial partner for companies, institutions
and private individuals, SEB operates within
retail and private banking, merchant banking,
investment banking, asset management and life
insurance.
About Optial
Optial has the largest installed blue-chip geographic
footprint of any Operational Risk platform: it
is deployed across 50 countries by a client base
including companies such as IBM and Standard
Chartered Bank. It is supported from centres
in London, Atlanta and Sydney.
Every firm has a unique business model and corresponding
risk profile - even more pronounced for multinational
firms operating across several jurisdictions.
Optial doesn't try to impose 'one size fits all'
processes onto its clients; rather we help our
clients build Total Corporate Governance by mapping
their organisation structure, operational performance
criteria and control processes into an overall
risk model, using Optial's workflow capability
to change behaviour. We then set up an individually-configured
implementation to meet specific risk profile,
language and jurisdictional reporting requirements,
before deploying using zero-footprint browser
technology.
The standards-based platform delivers rapid
configuration, low-cost deployment and low-maintenance
with future-proofing. Built-in KRI ’s and Loss
Database allow firms to align their system with
Basel II requirements, while Web Services interfaces
and software developer kit enables simplified
integration with other systems such as HR, CRM
and MIS for two-way automated data exchange and
single sign on.
Press contact:
Giffin Lorimer, Marketing Manager
giffin.lorimer@optial.com
+44 (0) 20 7247 7673 |
