HIGHLIGHTS
Client: MASfin Consulting, Inc.
Objectives
Deliver an integrated risk management solution quickly and within budget
Requirements
- Adhere to an aggressive timeline for project delivery
- Create risk system that could integrate the fixed income, money market, FX, precious metals, equity and structured finance operations
"FINCAD's products are the best source of industry standard, proven analytics for designing risk management systems for our clients."
Amber Tolat, President, MASfin
Background
MASfin Consulting, Inc., founded by financial industry veterans, has built a proven record in cleaning, normalizing and integrating financial systems and data, resulting in sound frameworks for both risk management, and for other systems used by the financial industry. MASfin's Risk Management Group assists with implementations of enterprise-wide risk management systems for both market and credit risk.
Requirements
The New York branch of a leading German financial institution engaged MASfin's Risk Management Group to deliver an integrated risk management solution. The German bank set an aggressive time-table for developing a system that integrated the fixed income, money market, foreign exchange, precious metals, equity and structured finance operations of the branch. The client was looking for a consolidated, timely and accurate solution that included:
- Positions
- Transactions
- Cash-flow projections
- Scenario analysis
- DV01s and Greeks for their portfolios across several businesses to give the bank an overview of their economic Profit/Loss and Risk
- Independent portfolio and price verification in order to quantify risk
Solution
MASfin integrated the company's data from the various disparate systems including Opics, FISTs, Murex, Kondor+, Devon and ADP to form a Risk data-mart. MASfin used its RisQ-Tools, a set of micro-project components, to help boot-strap the project. At the core of RisQ-Tools is its normalized financial database, which serves as the link between source systems; providing transaction/ position, market, other static data, as well as systems performing risk analysis.
This data had to be transformed, cleaned and reconciled before it could be useful. MASfin developed algorithms to compute cash-flows and scenario analysis for several diverse instruments, using financial models offered by FINCAD.
Results
FINCAD has offered a comprehensive set of industry standard analytics covering all asset classes and derivatives in a single environment, easy to use developer toolkit, and expert support. Results include:
Achieved Project Goals: Using FINCAD, enabled the New York branch to meet the Corporate Global Risk Committee's standards. Delivery of an integrated risk management system was completed on time and under budget.
Improved Reporting: Reports can now be generated to meet the needs of several business functions besides risk management, including finance, traders and senior management.
Regulatory Adherence: The New York branch can now meet SEC and federal regulatory requirements.
Ease of Design: The ease of maintenance resulting from designing the data model and systems as components means the system can continue to be easily evolved as necessary and it now feeds the bank's core systems.
"FINCAD is clearly an expert in its field. so it only makes sense for us and our clients to capitalize on that."