Waltham, Mass. – July 21, 2008 – OpenPages®, a leading provider of enterprise GRC management solutions that optimize business performance, today announced that FirstRand Banking Group, one of South Africa's largest banking organizations, has selected the OpenPages Operational Risk Management (ORM) solution to address Basel II capital allocation costs as part of the company's overall risk management strategy. FirstRand selected OpenPages ORM because of the solution's rapid time to value and its overall functionality, as well as OpenPages' highly regarded domain expertise and leadership position in the risk management space.
"In today's highly competitive financial services environment, obtaining Basel II AMA regulatory approval can result in a competitive advantage," said Jan Lubbe, head of Enterprise Risk Management, at FirstRand. "It allows us to improve the maturity and sophistication of our risk management techniques, and long term, also reduces our regulatory capital, meaning that we’ll have more money to put to work in our commercial business. To address this challenge, we needed a solution that we could deploy quickly and that could easily adapt to our risk management framework. OpenPages ORM, backed by a team of experts from OpenPages, was the clear choice for FirstRand in meeting our Basel II and ongoing risk management goals."
Other factors that contributed to FirstRand's decision to deploy OpenPages' technology include the following:
FirstRand knows first-hand about both banking and insurance. FirstRand Banking Group is a subsidiary of the listed entity FirstRand Limited which owns a number of leading financial services franchises in South Africa. The banking franchises include the commercial bank FNB, asset finance lender WesBank and investment bank Rand Merchant Bank, all of which operate throughout southern Africa. FNB owns and operates more than 650 branches and 4,000 ATMs throughout South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland.
Additionally, FirstRand Limited's wholly owned subsidiaries, Momentum Group, houses life and health assurance, asset management and employee benefits.
As part of the OpenPages Platform, OpenPages ORM is a key building block in implementing an enterprise-wide, integrated approach to risk and compliance management. OpenPages ORM delivers a policy-driven, process-centric way to manage risk through self-assessments, end-user surveys, automated workflow and executive dashboards that provide management with the visibility, control and decision support required to understand and manage risks throughout the organization to optimize business performance.
OpenPages is the leading provider of integrated risk management solutions for global companies. The OpenPages Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Platform empowers a risk-based approach to identify and manage key business risks across the enterprise. This approach enables companies to focus on what’s important and to avoid unexpected outcomes while improving performance. Founded in 1996, the company is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, with international offices in the United Kingdom, distribution partners in Japan and South Africa and regional offices throughout North America.
For more information on OpenPages' governance, risk and compliance solutions, please click here or call us at 781.693.5999.
