Zurich, December 7, 2006 – Argenta, a top 5 Belgian retail bank, has selected riskpro™ as a core tool for its risk management. The project focuses on ALM, VaR and FTP. riskpro™ will replace the Bank’s existing ALM tool which had a more limited scope. This is the third riskpro™ customer in Belgium.
Triggered by the growth of the Bank and by the demands of pillar II of the Basel II new capital accord, the Bank started a software evaluation project in Spring 2006. Implementation will start in January 2007, and will be executed in phases to produce first productive results with a minimum through time.
The Evaluation Team, led by Lode Vingerhoets, decided in Fall 2006 for riskpro™ for the following reasons: ” riskpro™ offers broad and deep functionality in the area of Asset Liability Management. It provides the option to expand usage into other areas such as credit risk and regulatory reporting. The riskpro™ framework will support us in the calculation of economic capital.”
Kris Luyten, Senior Consultant at IRIS AG, commented: ” riskpro™ is the perfect tool for a growing and ambitious bank. It provides a low cost of entry because of its modular structure. At the same time it offers high scalability, both in terms of volume and functionality.”
riskpro™ enables financial organizations to measure and monitor risk and profitability enterprise-wide with a single cost effective integrated analysis infrastructure. riskpro™ covers ALM, market and credit risk analytics including Exposure Analysis, Value at Risk, Funds Transfer Pricing, Dynamic Simulation, Basel I and II, Risk-Adjusted Performance Analysis, IFRS 39, etc. These analyses cover all financial products, from saving accounts to exotic options, for any type of accepted valuation method. The underlying universal contract-centric data model and calculation engine of riskpro™ ensures precision and consistency in all results. riskpro™ is currently being used or implemented in over 200 small to large financial organizations in 16 countries.
IRIS AG, founded in 1992 in Zurich, continuously develops, maintains and supports its riskpro™ financial analysis infrastructure. Selling, implementation and consulting are executed worldwide by IRIS AG and in cooperation with a number of regional partners such as Accenture, ATOS, Bazy I Systemy Bankowe (Poland), d-fine (Germany), Intracom (Greece), Inventrix (Malaysia), etc.
Argenta is a leading retail bank in Belgium and is based in Antwerp. Its particular strengths are mortgages and savings products. The Bank also has international activities. The Bank prides itself on providing value for money for its customers and on being recognized as a cost leader and strong competitor among its peers. It has grown strongly in the past years and intends to keep on doing so.
At the end of the year 2005 Argenta Group employs 2005 staff and has a balance sheet total of € 22,7 billion, with a net profit of € 70,5 million.