By: Kari Michel What is Basel II?  Basel II is the international convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards. It is a revised framework and is the second iteration of an international standard of laws. The purpose of Basel II is to create an international standard that banking regulators can use when creating regulations about how much capital banks need to put aside to guard against the types of financial and operations risk banks face.  Basel II ultimately implements standards to assist in maintaining a healthy financial system. The business challenge The framework for Basel II compels the supervisors to ensure that banks implement credit rating techniques that represent their particular risk profile.  Besides the risk inputs (Probability of Default (PD), Loss Given Default (LGD) and Exposure at Default (EAD)) calculation, the final Basel accord includes the “use test” requirement which is the requirement for a firm to use an advanced approach more widely in its business and met merely for calculation of regulatory capital. Therefore many financial institutions are required to make considerable changes in their approach to risk management (i.e. infrastructure, systems, processes, data requirements).  Experian is a leading provider of risk management solutions — products and services for the new Basel Capital Accord (Basel II).  Experian’s approach includes consultancy, software, and analytics tailored to meet the lender’s Basel II requirements.  

A recent January 29, 2010 article in the Wall Street Journal * discussing the repurchasing of loans by banks from Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac included a simple, yet compelling statement that I feel is worth further analysis. The article stated that "while growth in subprime defaults is slowing, defaults on prime loans are accelerating." I think this statement might come as a surprise to some who feel that there is some amount of credit risk and economic immunity for prime and super-prime consumers – many of whom are highly sought-after in today’s credit market. To support this statement, I reference a few statistics from the Experian-Oliver Wyman Market Intelligence Reports: • From Q1 2007 to Q1 2008, 30+ DPD mortgage delinquency rates for VantageScore® credit score A and B consumers remained flat (actually down 2%); while near-prime, subprime, and deep-subprime consumers experienced an increase of over 36% in 30+ rates. • From Q4 2008 to Q4 2009, 30+ DPD mortgage delinquency rates for VantageScore® credit score A and B consumers increased by 42%; whereas consumers in the lower VantageScore® credit score tiers saw their 30+ DPD rate increase by only 23% in the same period Clearly, whether through economic or some other form of impact, repayment practices of prime and super-prime, consumers have been changing as of late, and this is translating to higher delinquency rates. The call-to-action for lenders, in their financial risk management and credit risk modeling efforts, is increased attentiveness in assessing credit risk beyond just a credit score…whether this be using a combination of scores, or adding Premier Attributes into lending models – in order to fully assess each consumer’s risk profile. *  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704343104575033543886200942.html

By: Wendy Greenawalt Marketing is typically one of the largest expenses for an organization while also being a priority to reach short and long-term growth objectives. With the current economic environment, continuing to be unpredictable many organizations have reduced budgets and focused on more risk and recovery activities. However, in the coming year we expect to see improvements and organizations renew their focus to portfolio growth. We expect that campaign budgets will continue to be much lower than what was allocated before the mortgage meltdown but organizations are still looking for gains in efficiency and response to meet business objectives. Creation of optimized marketing strategies is quick and easy when leveraging optimization technology enabling your internal resources to focus on more strategic issues. Whether your objective is to increase organizational or customer level profit, growth in specific product lines or maximizing internal resources optimization can easily identify the right solution while adhering to key business objectives. The advanced software now available enables an organization to compare multiple campaign options simultaneously while analyzing the impact of modifications to revenue, response or other business metrics. Specifically, very detailed product offer information, contact channels, timing, and letter costs from multiple vendors and consumer preferences can all be incorporated into an optimization solution. Once defined the complex mathematical algorithm factors every combination of all variables, which could range in the thousands, are considered at the consumer level to determine the optimal treatment to maximize organizational goals and constraints. In addition, by incorporating optimized decisions into marketing strategies marketers can execute campaigns in a much shorter timeframe allowing an organization to capitalize on changing market conditions and consumer behaviors. To illustrate the benefit of optimization an Experian bankcard client was able to reduced analytical time to launch programs from 7 days to 90 minutes while improving net present value. In my next blog, we will discuss how organizations can cut costs when acquiring new accounts.