Briefs

CARY, N.C. (Sept. 8, 2003) - Incomplete, inaccurate or obsolete data is the primary reason that financial institutions are losing up to $120 million a year through operational risk. That is the conclusion of a recent survey by the Risk Waters Group and SAS, the market leader in business intelligence.

The survey, the largest ever conducted about operational risk management, included interviews with 400 risk managers at 300 financial institutions. It looked into the losses suffered through operational risk and what companies in the financial sector are doing to reduce them.

Respondents from 28 percent of the companies feel that the difficulty in collecting the volume of data required to accurately identify and manage operational risk represents the major obstacle to preventing losses. Another 33 percent blame poor data quality as the major stumbling block.

Further results of the study indicated that a perceived lack of functionality in existing software packages combined with fears about the high cost of modeling and analysis packages were the main obstacles to implementation. Sixty-eight percent of respondents had built at least one operational risk system in-house because it was seen to be cost-effective and could be designed to meet the specific needs of the business.

For a summary of survey results, please visit: http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/090803/news1_addition.html.