Wachovia Builds Environment for Financial and Risk Measurement

Firm benefits from transparency and competitive differentiation, exec says.

Wachovia doesn't have a "database" or a "system" for integrating financial and risk measures- it has an "environment."

That's because the firm's "environment" encompasses not only technology, but also policies, practices, processes, integrity, controls and reconciling, according to Beth Gibson, senior vice president, Wachovia Corp. (Charlotte, N.C., $389 billion in assets)

One clear result is transparency in financial reporting. "We do a report, by business line, of RAROC [Risk-Adjusted Return on Capital] and economic profit, externally in our disclosures," says Gibson. "We get accolades from external investors and analysts."

The ability to access integrated customer data also helps to set strategy. "We measure the performance of our products, our business units, our customers and our geographic segments," says Gibson. "It has provided us with competitive differentiation, in the ability to measure, monitor and report our results."

Getting to a single customer database required integrating information from approximately 80 mergers into a single Oracle database. "This was not an easy undertaking," says Gibson. "But we're in a really, really good place right now."

Gibson spoke at Oracle AppsWorld 2004 in San Diego.