SunGard Identifies Ten Trends for 2010 in Risk Management and Technology

Marcus Cree, (http://twitter.com/MarcusCreeRisk) director of risk solutions for SunGard’s capital markets and investment banking business, said, “Regulators, investors and managers have changed their view of how financial institutions need to be run and how the markets need to be controlled. They demand more disclosure, improved risk management and more capital control. To achieve this, firms need a risk infrastructure that supports the ability to pinpoint their exposure, better manage capital flows and achieve a holistic view of risk across the enterprise.”

Wayne, PA (Vocus) February 8, 2010 -- SunGard’s ten trends shaping risk management and technology in 2010 are:

1.   Chief risk officers will intensify management oversight to satisfy stakeholder demand for risk transparency and expected levels of risk exposure.
2.   The interdependent network of banking roles (trading, risk, management) will cause internal risk cultures to strengthen.
3.   Risk and trading need to more efficiently approach and use data: they need to look at the same underlying data sets so that a risk management strategy incorporates indicators used by traders.
4.   VaR measurement needs to be supported by additional measures and good risk oversight and management.
5.   Measurement of the likelihood of rare events (VaR tail analysis) will be more widely adopted to help firms find catastrophic break points.
6.   Stress-testing of portfolios will become an increasingly more significant contributor to risk reporting.
7.   Credit default swaps highlighted a need for greater unification of market and credit risk management: credit effects should be incorporated into market stress tests to cover liquidity/crisis effect scenarios.
8.   Rating-based spreads will continue to be impacted if the market continues to front-run ratings agencies in determining the credit worthiness of an institution.
9.   External (investor) assessment of visible, effective risk management will directly impact firms’ ability to raise capital.
10.   Regulatory pressure on risk management will remain high, as central banks and politicians manage the ‘post-crisis’ under extreme media scrutiny.

Derek Penn, managing director and head of equity sales and trading at Pershing, a company of BNY Mellon Corporation, said, “We've had record volumes, we've had record volatility, and a number of SunGard products have helped us navigate this chaotic environment. Transparency is quite important from both a management and a risk management standpoint. We can look at a SunGard terminal and determine exactly what a customer has traded.”

Bob Egan (http://twitter.com/bobegan), global head of research and chief analyst at TowerGroup, said, “Greater transparency will be needed in retail credit and portfolio risk and on the institutional side, in high-volume derivatives and other complex instruments driven by institutional governance and regulations. Technology is going to play a key role in trust that is motivated by consumer and regulatory interests in the areas of risk, the need for speed and automatic compliance government programs.”

Dana Wiklund (http://twitter.com/dwiklund), analyst at IDC Financial Insights, said, “Risk managers need transparency to get to the truth around the effects of volatility on the organization; that is, getting the right information into the right context, so the right decisions can be made. Financial institutions are being held back due to budget constraints, communication within the organization and disparate sources of data from which to assess and truly understand risk. There needs to be an enterprise risk management process starting with establishing business objectives and the right controls that can be monitored, and then analyzing the organization vertically and horizontally to make sure those objectives are achieved. Organizing data, putting it in the right context, and making it available to the right people are crucial to achieving this.”

Each week follow SunGard’s “Trend Tuesday” on Twitter via #TEN10 for the top 10 trends in areas of financial services and energy http://twitter.com/SunGardFS.

About SunGard’s solutions for capital markets
SunGard’s solutions for capital markets provide visibility into all business lines with a position control infrastructure for trading across asset classes and securities financing. The solutions support the entire trade lifecycle from execution to settlement, helping investment banks to manage global trading and financing functions.

About SunGard
SunGard is one of the world’s leading software and IT services companies. SunGard serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries.

SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software.

With annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 435 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and services company on the Forbes list of private businesses. Based on information compiled by Datamonitor*, SunGard is the third largest provider of business applications software after Oracle and SAP. Continuity, Insurance & Risk has recognized SunGard as service provider of the year an unprecedented six times. For more information, please visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.

*January 2009 Technology Vendors Financial Database Tracker http://www.datamonitor.com

Trademark Information: SunGard the SunGard logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

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