Press release - "Liquidity Modelling solution takes the pressure off C. Hoare & Co."
Find out how our ALFI® solution is helping the UK's leading independent private bank, C. Hoare & Co., meet the FSA’s mandate for managing liquidity risk
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Whistlebrook Liquidity Modelling solution takes the pressure off C. Hoare & Co.
Leading UK independent bank, C.Hoare & Co., is operating Whistlebrook's AnaLytics for Financial Institutions (ALFI®) module, an automated solution for liquidity modelling, specifically designed to provide a single interactive, graphical, management information system.
Whistlebrook was initially engaged by C.Hoare in March to install ALFI® for Business Intelligence and data warehousing, to populate regulatory reports. However, with the FSA's 1st June deadline looming, focus quickly switched to liquidity modelling and C.Hoare invited Whistlebrook to develop a system capable of running stress tests which comply with the FSA guidelines.
Richard Mumford, IT operations project manager at C.Hoare, said: "We sat down with Whistlebrook and interpreted the FSA requirements, for example what a liquidity modelling test should comprise, and they developed a flexible, easy to use system that runs all the test scenarios and demonstrates how the bank would respond to them."
Andy Hudders, director at Whistlebrook, said: "Spreadsheets or paper-based systems, for example, are prone to inputting errors and lack the necessary auditing trails and drill-down capabilities. By comparison, ALFI® automatically extracts data from operating systems to give a single view of what's going on in the company, and provides granular analysis and the capability for daily reports, which the FSA could request in certain conditions."
"It's fair to say we were working on very tight timelines," commented Mumford, "populating ALFI® using ETL tools while simultaneously working on the liquidity modelling project. We agreed a delivery sequence and schedule, with a phased roll-out of scenario solutions as they were completed. This enabled us to perform testing and review as we went. Delivery was always on time and any issues identified were turned around very quickly by Whistlebrook."
The system has allowed C.Hoare to constantly remodel and rerun scenarios to show the impact of variations on the bank's liquidity position, which Mumford believes is something the FSA will want evidence of. "This compares very favourably to manual systems which would be resource-intensive and liable to inconsistencies."
Mumford continued: Another major plus point is being able to conduct reporting and modelling from the same data set. Many other financial firms don't have this capability, which means doubling up database applications and creating a potential mismatch. From an integrity viewpoint it's pretty fundamental, but it also makes a lot of sense in terms of effort and resource.
"ALFI® was also a lower cost solution than other vendors we considered in the project analysis phase, and fitted with our business model, system architecture and time schedule."
Andy Hudders said:" "If institutions have issues or concerns about liquidity modelling and reporting, we offer a proven and flexible solution that is quick to implement and easy to use. We completed the system for C.Hoare in six weeks, which included writing the application, so a four week timeline is very achievable."
Mumford commented: "Software houses will typically deliver to specification but often lack sufficient comprehension of the business requirement. Whistlebrook's understanding of the operational context and objectives was really appreciated by our financial team and was key to the project's success."
