There are numerous strategic risk issues that might keep a chief risk officer or chief executive officer awake at night. Particularly since the financial meltdown, many are asking themselves (and anyone who will listen), “Do we need to do more in risk management?”

Evaluating your program is an intense process, but you can start with some basic information. These questions, taken from The new risk era: Capturing the whole picture, are a wonderful exercise to help you evaluate your risk management strategy. Take a moment to honestly gauge your organization’s efforts surrounding risk management.

If you can answer “No” to any of the following questions, your organization can benefit from establishing a formal enterprise risk management approach or reevaluating its existing framework:

• Are your risk and compliance requirements properly integrated with your business priorities?
• Is your risk management process aligned with your strategic decision-making process and existing performance measures?
• Is your risk framework properly calibrated to recent market developments?
• Does your current risk framework drive timely, top-notch decision making?
• Can you proactively analyze the changes in exposures to your financial performance?
• Is your risk management process coordinated and consistent across the entire enterprise? Does everyone use the same definition of risk?
• Is risk data accessible to anyone who needs to see it, in a form they need to see, when they need to see it?
• Are you ahead of your competitors in meeting regulatory expectations about firmwide risk reporting and monitoring?

With these questions answered, you've developed a roadmap that you and your team can follow to begin the education process. David Rogers, SAS' Global Product Marketing Manager in Risk, gives three recommendations to deploy an enterprise risk management program: 1.) Embed risk management as part of your organizational culture; 2.) Integrate a governance, risk and compliance program; and 3.) Immerse yourself in the evolving world of risk. As a first step toward immersing yourself in the evolving world of risk - take a look at the thought leadership articles and examples on the Risk Management Knowledge Exchange.

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Self-reliant business users would like to use analytics more often to address changing market conditions and make quick decisions. Take, for example, a marketer or customer support specialist who might want to generate analytics and apply results to a variety of business issues, including:

• Determine which inbound customer interactions are best candidates for an up-sell or cross-sell or a retention offer.
• Recognize which customers are likely to respond and include them in the new campaign.
• Measure the propensity for an active customer to churn.

Should that marketer have to rely on statisticians, modelers or data mining specialists to create predictive models every time? Are they frustrated because they have to wait for answers? Do they have to apply above issues to hundreds of product or service offerings? You bet! On the other hand, business analysts often do not understand all aspects of data mining and statistics.
Continue reading "Self-service predictive analytics is here. Are you ready?"

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Earlier this week I read an interesting article about how the UK operation of Zurich Insurance have been fined £2.27m by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for losing the personal details of 46,000 customers. Specifically, two points from this article grabbed my attention. First of all, on a positive note, was the seriousness that the UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) has taken in tackling this problem. Secondly, on a negative note, the most astonishing thing about this incident, which happened in August 2008, was that Zurich Insurance were oblivious to the data loss until a year later!

Today, one of the greatest risk exposures that insurers face is the security of personally identifiable information (PII) of policyholders and applicants. Technology has played a major role in this, as the Internet, high-speed networks, mobile computing and better information sharing have made PII more vulnerable to unauthorized access while also becoming more valuable to criminals.

PII data breaches can have a huge negative impact on a company’s bottom line. As well as regulatory fines, it is estimated that the financial impact of a PII data breach of a nominal 5,000 records could range from $450,000 to more than $1.5 million. In addition to financial losses, there’s also the risk of a damaged business reputation, which can lead to fewer cross-sell/up-sell opportunities and even to a loss of policyholders.
Continue reading "Fixing a hole – Securing personal information."

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Recently, I had the privilege of visiting one of our small to midsize business (SMB) customers, Oberweis Dairy, a family owned, 90-year-old business located in the Chicago area. Essentially, Oberweis has morphed from a family dairy farm to a significant, regional food manufacturer and retailer.

With 39 retail stores, 40,000 home delivery customers and many wholesale local and chain grocery customers, the Oberweis operation today probably isn’t what Peter Oberweis envisioned when he started selling excess milk to neighbors in 1915. It is a sophisticated business that is growing, with plans to grow even more. To that end, Oberweis has used SAS Analytics, under the leadership of Dr. Bruce Bedford, to identify and correct manufacturing issues, mine customer complaint data and root out bottle return fraud.

Driving away from their factory, I couldn’t help but think of a recent business analytics white paper from UBM TechWeb and sponsored by SAS. The paper details survey results of 800 leaders at small- to mid-sized businesses. We comissioned the survey to better understand the use of analytics in the SMB market. Quite simply, we wanted to know how many SMBs are employing analytics in their normal course of business, and if not - why? And when they might plan to use analytics?

The survey asked many questions about how SMBs are using analytics, and what they thought was preventing them from employing analytics in their businesses. Many SMBs interviewed thought that it would be nice to have analytics deployed but didn’t think they could afford them. In fact, 50 percent of the respondents thought their businesses were too small for “big-enterprise” solutions and 24 percent said they would buy an analytical solution if they could afford it and understand the value it delivered. (Click image to see details.)
Continue reading "Do cows need analytics too?"

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Every day I see news reports of financial organizations and consumers falling victim to yet another payment fraud scheme. Whether it is through a card, wire, online banking or another channel, fraudsters are becoming much more savvy in the way they attack.

Financial organizations need to rethink their arsenal of technologies that have become outdated and switch to more modern techniques that keep up with the strategies of today's fraudsters. As I interview our clients and talk to experts in the field, it has become more apparent to me that they need enhanced processes and technologies to become more proactive in their detection of fraud.

Check out this customer video that shows how one global organization is reshaping their approach to tackling fraud before it happens, using real time analysis and alert detection capabilities that extend across the enterprise. HSBC has implemented a true enterprise fraud platform.

You'll catch a glimpse of some innovative techniques that can provide:

• Real-time scoring of 100% of all transactions.
  
• Unique customer signature files that allow models to detect pattern changes in customer behavior that may indicate a fraudulent activity.
  
• Multiple analytical approaches including fraud network analysis for detecting the most sophisticated crimes rings.
  
• Integrated case management capabilities for managing multiple alerts from multiple fraud systems.
  
• Dashboard reporting for communicating results such as operational efficiencies, more effective resource utilization, improved false positive ratios, and fraud reduction.

Even, if you're not in banking, it's worth thinking about how you can apply these same concepts in your organization to deter fraudsters. We've also seen great fraud detection successes from insurance companies and government agencies.

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