Oracle Releases Risk Hub

At Sibos in Atlanta, Oracle announced its "Regulatory Capital Manager" product to help banks address the needs and requirements of Basel II. With this product, Oracle would be used as the consolidation point for offerings from other risk management providers. "All of the information associated with those applications is in a single database," says Andrea Klein, vice president of financial services industry marketing for Oracle (Redwood Shores, Calif.). "It is very much designed for the Chief Risk Officer level."

On the operational risk side, Oracle has a dashboard product called "Internal Controls Manager" that allows drill-down access to data and events being tracked for regulatory compliance. "It's a single place to integrate information that's related to every one of the regulatory mandates, so that you can drill down through the same dashboard in Sarbanes-Oxley information, Basel II information, Patriot Act information, and see the relationships," says Klein.

Getting a handle on enterprise risk does more than help satisfy regulatory mandates stemming from Basel II. Also, the process can prepare banks to go public. "In Asia-Pacific, for example, there are large institutions in the region which really want to list on the NYSE or some of the other stock exchanges in the world, and they can't until they have a way to transparently look at their assets," says Klein. "Basel offers a unique opportunity to get to some internationally agreed-upon standards."

Back in the U.S., there's another risk management opportunity stemming from the implementation of Check 21. By scanning checks as they come in, banks can gain same-day visibility into their inter-bank exposures and their customers' payment activities, according to Klein. "In the same way that the Basel II guidelines are going to make the banks more aware of their capital position so they can manage their money more effectively, you can do that same kind of better management on each one of your corporate accounts," she says. "You'll really know what's going on day-to-day."