Strategic Thought

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 Foundational Qualities

Active Risk Manager today has a significant and successful customer base, the majority of deployments being into large global organizations. Our deployments can run into thousands of users and our scope of usage extends into all nuances of risk management, from assessment to audit, compliance to opportunity, projects to operations.

Applications that are deployed in these types of environments must be able to integrate into the wider technical architecture already present, whilst also adding value to both the potential of existing applications and the organization as a whole.

A leading Insurer described our advantage in the market and being the fact that our customers all have the same "Foundational Software", differentiating ARM from other competitive risk tools by highlighting its unique Foundational Qualities. These are core technical qualities that make Active Risk Manager a technology that fits into the existing IT environments of the majority of the world’s major companies. Amongst these foundational qualities are the fact that:

• ARM has controlled configuration, enabling local operation flexibility whilst still facilitating seamless integration to the governance layer of the organization.
• ARM has extensive capability: functional depth and breadth meets today’s market needs and has the capability to address compliance, governance and operating regimes as they change over time, whilst the core architecture of ARM enables the delivery of innovative capabilities, integrations and collaboration opportunities by leveraging the investment made by the major software stack owners, such as Microsoft and IBM.
• ARM has proven and robust scalability: with over 10,000 users we have to use the most advanced test and proof models for new releases available in our industry.
• ARM has a security model that enables usage beyond the enterprise, for example into an organization’s supply chain, ensuring controlled access and confidentiality automatically.
• ARM is capable of providing the appropriate interaction with specific user groups ensuring that the risk management process is embedded efficiently. This is achieved via a core application that delivers information through configurable screens, email, and finally through the intranet or portal layer of our customers’ desktops.  ARM has touch points that are appropriate to the specific type of user.

As discussed above, Foundational requirements are those that form the core functionality and capability of the application: it is from this core that the rest of the applications capability is driven, and that external applications are able to integrate with ARM.

The Foundational aspects of ARM enable the application to quickly integrate into the host technologies and processes and deliver actual benefits from day 1. Amongst the benefits that can be expected from installation are:

• Consolidation of RM processes and data (from Excel templates and external sources) to minimize risk duplication and rollup/reporting effort
• A reliable automated system that brings on new functions when needed, helping you minimize cultural change and gain buy-in to a common process.
• Support for the transition from Qualitative to Quantitative assessments, ensuring you allocate the right level capital to manage against assumed $/£ impacts over time
• Reporting efficiencies: reducing data manipulation and speed of outputs
• Alerts mechanism that supports process automation
• Timeliness of information to senior management to improve decision making – a combined view, same time, any time
• Disclosure and auditability of data, verifying process maturity levels and adherence to governance standards.

In time, customers can expect to see long-term returns and benefits as well. These include:

• Ongoing compliance with changing FSA/SEC/Corporate regulations.
  

- FSA is expected to impose new regulations next year on finance companies requiring that they quantify their risk. We are the only solution that provides this capability currently.

• Quantifiable RoI: Munich Re recently proved that by obtaining a positive report from the FSA on risk and control accountability they managed to increase their credit rating and thus increase their market cap by 10%
• Long-term forecasted view of the exposure the business faces
• Opportunity to build up an integrated loss database to reduce insurance premiums
• Embedded Internal Audit and Compliance within the process
• Building up of an accessible knowledge base of known risks
• Improved Controls efficiency and accountability
• Reducing business losses and earnings volatility
• Seizing of opportunities and consider potential events, rather than just risks.

All of ARM’s rich functional capabilities are built upon Foundational Qualities of:

• Security
• Scalability
• Auditing
• Configurability