Corporate Statement > Alliance & Leicester Choose WhiteLight

After an extensive review of vendor solutions, Alliance & Leicester, one of the UK's major financial services groups, has chosen WhiteLight, a SymphonyRPM company, to provide their Basel II Retail Credit Risk solution.

WhiteLight is implementing its Basel II Retail Credit Risk Model for Regulatory Capital calculations and developing additional modules to provide functionality to generate PD/LGD/EAD factors, support Segmentation and calculate Provisions. The solution is based on the WhiteLight AnalyticServer platform, which is used by banks across the globe to model complex financial instruments and portfolios and to perform advanced analysis and stress-testing.

Auditability, Flexibility and Stress-Testing
Alliance & Leicester chose WhiteLight over competitors for its transparent audit capabilities, flexible stress-testing, ease of maintenance, total cost of ownership, and the Basel II expertise of the WhiteLight team.

Cost Savings
Alliance & Leicester will be replacing its existing tool for the generation of PD and LGD estimates with a WhiteLight module and, as a result, expect considerable savings in time and on-going support costs. In addition, the WhiteLight system will provide greater transparency, analytical flexibility and usability. Thanks to the unique, patented, rules-based engine of the WhiteLight Analytic Server, Alliance & Leicester will be able to self-support the Basel II Retail Credit Risk Model and, thus, will be able to amend the models in line with the latest Basel requirements without reliance on the software vendor.

Fast Implementation
The contract was signed in September 2003, and implementation is due to be completed within 3 months. The speed of deployment is thanks to the use of WhiteLight’s Basel II template models, which will be rapidly modified to fit Alliance & Leicester’s requirements, and the general ease with which complex modeling can be performed on the WhiteLight Analytic Server. In this way, a customized solution will be delivered within Alliance & Leicester’s challenging timescales.

Buy AND Build
WhiteLight, part of SymphonyRPM, an international company with offices in the US, Europe and India, has produced a range of solutions for Basel II compliance, including ‘off-the-shelf’ models for Retail, Corporate / Sovereign / Bank and Specialised Lending Credit Risk, as well as for Operational Risk (AMA). In addition to pre-packaged solutions, WhiteLight offers template models, which enable clients to build on the Basel modeling expertise of WhiteLight and add their own business specific functionality. The company also offers consulting and bespoke development around PD/LGD/EAD factor generation and Provisioning.

For more information, please call WhiteLight on [phone] or go to: www.symphonyfs.com.