PricewaterhouseCoopers New Zealand selects Visual Risk as the core system for their new Treasury Outsourcing business

Visual Risk is pleased to announce that PricewaterhouseCoopers NZ has selected our fully integrated suite of Risk / ALM, Treasury Management and IAS Compliance modules to underpin their new Treasury Outsourcing business.

PwC New Zealand is now able to offer a full suite of integrated treasury management solutions ranging from tailored risk analysis and board reporting to back-office outsourcing based on the most advanced treasury system of its kind. The service can now deliver mid-sized companies the powerful functionality of the full Visual Risk system at a fraction of the cost of an inhouse system along with the backing of PwC’s team of dedicated treasury specialists.

“PwC’s selection of Visual Risk once more confirms our position of market leadership in this region” says Richard Hughes, Managing Director. “Together with PwC, we hope to continue revolutionising the way businesses manage their treasuries in New Zealand.”

PricewaterhouseCoopers Partner, Paul Skillender, highlights the benefits of this new strategic alliance: "With Visual Risk we can provide a full range of outsourcing and consultancy services to all sizes of business, with full support from a global network of treasury and market risk experts," he says. "This cost effective service is underpinned by the latest treasury solutions developments and best practice techniques made available by Visual Risk. It means we can provide small and medium sized clients with a full range of services covering all aspects of risk analysis - from specialised 'at-risk' and 'stress testing', to seamless fully outsourced middle and back office treasury services."

For more detail on the new PwC Service see:

http://www.pwc.com/nz/RiskSolutionsBoardReporting (PDF file)

Visual Risk assists with ECU Australia’s transition to AASB 139 compliance

In addition to assisting financial institutions to better understand and manage their interest rate risk, Visual Risk occupies the envious position of being Australia & New Zealand’s leading AASB 139 hedge accounting solution. Last year we assisted ECU Australia, a community based mutual in Cairns, Queensland, with the difficult transition to AASB 139 compliance.

“When I first approached Visual Risk I was very impressed with their understanding of the technical aspects of AASB 139 and most importantly, the sheer speed with which their proprietary software was able to produce compliant documentation. ECU Australia only has a small number of interest rate swaps in place and therefore we opted to have Visual Risk run our AASB 139 reporting on an outsourced basis… Through outsourcing our reporting to Visual Risk we are confident that ECU Australia can reduce the potential for excess P&L volatility and avoid any costly errors arising from not properly complying with AASB 139. Our auditors are very happy with the Visual Risk reports and have signed off on their methodology."

Brett Myles – Chief Executive Officer
ECU Australia

SBS Bank implements Visual Risk as integrated ALM & treasury solution

Established in 1869, SBS Bank (formerly Southland Building Society) is New Zealand's largest building society and officially received bank registration on 7 October 2008. SBS Bank offers a wide range of banking services and products, including transactional banking, phone and internet banking, investments, residential and commercial lending, managed funds, agribusiness, consumer finance and insurance.

Visual Risk is pleased to announce that after an extensive evaluation process SBS Bank has selected the Visual Risk software to deliver an integrated risk and treasury platform.

“With the growth of our business and SBS Bank’s recent acquisition of full banking registration status it had become clear that it was necessary to beef up our risk and treasury management processes to bring them in line with current best practice. At the same time, we also needed a solution for complying with the onerous requirements of IAS 39 hedge accounting. In our search for a software solution it was therefore preferable that we find something that was equally competent in Asset-Liability Management, Treasury Management and IAS 39 Hedge Accounting. There were many other vendors out there with strengths in one or two of these areas but Visual Risk was really the only vendor that could cost effectively bring all three functions together in a single integrated software platform.”

Michael Potter – Asset & Liability Manager
SBS Bank

Central West Credit Union outsources interest rate risk reporting

Central West Credit Union (CWCU) is a member-based mutual located in Parkes. It services local communities through the Central West region of NSW. Recently, CWCU sought the services of Visual Risk to provide them with a simple semi-annual interest rate risk reporting service on an outsourced basis.

“Visual Risk is delighted that we are able to assist local, community based financial institutions with their interest rate risk reporting needs. The needs of smaller financial institutions are just as real as those of the bigger players but often time and resource constraints mean that outsourcing to a specialist provider like Visual Risk becomes a very attractive and cost-effective option. We are happy to assist mutuals such as CWCU to better understand their balance sheet and also to meet their prudential reporting obligations.”

Glen Giffen – Head of Business Development
Visual Risk

CBS Canterbury implements Fair Value Macro approach to IAS 39

Visual Risk has last year completed a project in conjunction with CBS Canterbury to successfully implement a fair value macro approach to IAS 39 hedge accounting.

To date, most financial institutions in Australia and New Zealand have applied the cash flow approach to hedge accounting as this has proven simpler and easier to apply. However, in the context of a banking book often it is not always possible or desirable to apply the cash flow hedge accounting methodology for two primary reasons:

lack of a sufficient pool of qualifying liabilities to allocate to hedge relationships
the possibility of significant volatility to equity that can breach policy parameters around the equity to capital ratio

Visual Risk can now offer financial institutions the choice to apply either the cash flow or the fair value macro hedge accounting approach. The automation incorporated into the Visual Risk solution means that both solutions can be deployed with equal ease.

Functionality Focus:

Enhanced Balance Sheet Modelling

Visual Risk has commenced development of a significant set of enhancements in relation to our forecasting and budgeting capabilities. These enhancements will deliver even greater flexibility with respect to the modelling of projected product balances and customer behaviour, flowing right through to the potential impact of net interest earning.

The planned enhancements include:

easier modelling of non-symmetric repricing assumptions
greater ability to split product balances and apply different product projections

These enhancements reflect our commitment to continuous improvement of our product functionality to deliver a superior end-user experience. Release of this functionality is currently scheduled for June 2010.

Funds Transfer Pricing (FTP)

Visual Risk prides itself on developing innovative solutions to a range of challenges facing smaller & mid-tier financial institutions throughout Australia and New Zealand. One of our clients’ most commonly requested enhancements is the addition of an FTP capability to support our already strong Asset-Liability Management solution.

Visual Risk is pleased to announce our commitment to delivery of an FTP solution to be incorporated soon into Visual Risk. The solution will allow financial institutions to:

improve bottom line profitability by applying a multiple pool method
improve objectivity in performance measurement of business units
align the overall interests of the financial institution and individual business units

To find out more about this powerful Visual Risk functionality, please contact us