'Financial Crime Risk Management' technology market projected to hit $3.75bn by 2012

The report has also named SAS, the leading provider of business intelligence and analytical software and services, as among the three global leaders in financial crime risk management technology. At present, many major local and international banks, and financial institutions in the Middle East are using SAS' fraud, risk management and anti-money laundering technologies, including Riyad Bank and Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) amongst others.

Amidst issues in liquidity that are being faced by the financial sector in the Middle East, it is crucial for financial institutions and banks to be equipped with fraud, risk management and anti-money laundering technologies to combat any sort of fraud or crime. In line with this, Chartis Research complimented the functional SAS components of data analytics, alert generation, workflow management and case management.

Furthermore, the citation also recognised SAS' award-winning suite of financial crime solutions, which integrates analytics, advanced decision-making capabilities and sophisticated rules into a single 'Enterprise Financial Crimes Platform'.

"We are honoured to be acknowledged by Chartis Research as one of the world leaders in technology-enabled solutions for financial crime risk management. Amidst the current financial crisis and high profile failures being seen in the region, leading technology vendors need to provide an integrated enterprise risk management offering that can analyse and report on the gaps and overlaps between credit risk, operational risk and financial crime. We are proud to be one of the few technology vendors who have taken a fully integrated platform approach to developing its financial risk management solutions and anti-money laundering solutions."

said Peter C. Venn, Sales Director, SAS - Middle East.

The report, which specifically covers the market requirements for fraud, risk management and anti-money laundering technologies, forecasts of market size, competitive landscape and best practices, has noted SAS' strengths in credit risk, particularly retail banking, and operational risk. Further, SAS Financial Crime solutions enables accurate scoring of all transactions at the point of sale (POS) to stop fraudsters immediately and delivers a cross channel, cross line of business approach to detecting and preventing the more sophisticated and dynamic attacks. In addition, SAS software also garnered top positions in several areas including advanced analytics, data management and integration, configurability and support capabilities.

"The exceptional growth of our financial crime risk management solutions underlines the importance of financial analysis, customer intelligence systems, more formalised performance and risk management in terms of advancing banking organisations' capacity to maximise every opportunity in the market. Amidst the rapidly increasing demand, our winning strategy is based on our foresight to seize opportunities in identifying the common functional components and establishing clear strategies for a component-based solution. It is our commitment to continue to develop new technologies, which will not only help boost financial organisations' security but will also put them in a definite advantage from competition," concluded Venn.

As a testament to its strong pedigree in business intelligence, analytics and data-integration, SAS has been ranked by Chartis Research as the leader in its 'Operational Risk Management Systems' report for four consecutive years (2005 to 2008). At present, more than 200 global financial services institutions use SAS Financial Crime solutions.