The collapse of Northern Rock in 2007 was a memorable moment for Joe Di Rollo, not only because it signalled the beginning of the financial meltdown that would spread around the world; it also marked a step-change in the fortunes of ALMIS® International.
Continue reading this interview between Joe Di Rollo and Daily Business here.
Industry expert and guest speaker Chris Blake commented in our recent webinar that NSFR is perhaps more important than the LCR, and provided an explanation of this metric which was well received by attendees from over 85 Banks and Building Societies.
Our poll then showed many firms have not yet decided whether to go with a simplified or fully fledged approach. Given this, we are further highlighting the ALMIS® software facilitates both, comes out of the box with all the standard factors and can be computed directly for the same data used to populate the PRA 110, LCR and ALMM returns. Additionally, Chris strongly advised that firms run stressed equivalents of the NSFR as part of the ILAAP. This too is possible within the ALMIS® NSFR report where users are provided with functionality to flex Available Stable Funding and Required Stable Funding weightings or where the NSFR can be run on stressed, forecasted balance sheets using the ALMIS® Financial Planning tool.
Firms are reminded that they would need to apply to be treated as simplified. The simplified approach will usually produce a less favourable / efficient metric and so we at ALMIS® International recommend using the fully fledged approach, and for reporting efficiency and consistency, to use this with our Capital Adequacy module to correctly record 35% RWA’s.
Stuart Fairley presented our ALMIS® software solution beginning with the ALMIS® Middle Office+ dedicated ALM Data Platform. Our clients are preparing to migrate to our superior MO+ single version of the truth for the necessary transformations and data prep. Time did not allow for a detailed walk through of all the validation, searching, superior excel in and out, colour coded grids and workflow our customers can use.
If you’re interested in viewing the webinar or learning more please contact [email protected], and if you’re a client of ALMIS® International you can already view the webinar on our Client Area.
Central banks around the world are assessing and developing improved ways to receive and analyse data from banks. Since the 2008 banking crisis, there has been a tsunami of regulations and reporting requirements for Banks and, bluntly, the banking industry has struggled to keep up with these frequent and ever more complex requirements.
Continue reading this article by ALMIS® International Founder and CEO, Joe Di Rollo, featured here in the Finance Derivative.
Edinburgh Wednesday 11th August 2021: ALMIS® International, the Edinburgh-based asset liability and treasury management software developer, has announced the appointment of its first Chief Technical Officer to spearhead innovation and development for the regulatory compliance of banks and building societies.
Chris Smith, aged 42, has more than 20 years’ experience in solutions architecture, and software development infrastructure, joins ALMIS® International from Cegedim Healthcare Solutions, an innovative technology and services company providing management software suites to GP Surgeries and Pharmacies across the UK.
In recent years, there has been a steady increase in a global regulatory focus on technology and innovation as regulators look to shore up procedural compliance.
The company has positioned itself as one of the key software developers in this field and as Joe DiRollo, founder and managing director of ALMIS® International explains, the appointment of a Chief Technology Officer to oversee future incremental development of the product suite to comply with the regulatory demands placed on banks and building societies, helps ALMIS® maintain its position as a prominent corporate financial software developer.
He comments,
“We are delighted to welcome Chris Smith as ALMIS® International’s new Chief Technology Officer. “For some time, we have been searching for the right candidate who could drive through our medium to long term product development strategy. Chris comes with a wealth of knowledge and experience, creating and developing software in industries such as forestry and healthcare. He’ll be a strong addition to the team and provide the right balance of strategic thinking coupled with a practical hands-on approach to leading the developers and technical staff.”
Chris Smith said: “This is an exciting challenge and one that I am very much looking forward to. ALMIS® International is a hugely successful software firm operating in an area of the financial sector bound by extensive governance, risk, and compliance. This is a tremendous opportunity. I am very much looking forward to playing a key role in the future success of the company.”
The company is located in central Edinburgh and has a staff complement of 25 staff predominantly in development and technical support.
We’ve been busy over the last year or so and we’re hugely excited to tell you about our forthcoming software roll outs. This underlines our commitment to investing resources to make improvements that add value to your licences.
Our dedicated data platform, Middle Office+ is designed to give you a higher degree of flexibility when it comes to extracting and using your data. It has a wider and more sophisticated range of ETL tools which gives our Front Office modules the correct level of detail to run reports and functions. This enhanced data model offers you a data platform for both current and future ALM and regulatory reporting needs.
On 1 January 2022, the PRA’s Capital Requirements Regulation 2 (CRR2) will come into effect. This covers the Basel III reforms including the Pillar 1 Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR), new market risk requirements and the revised counterparty credit risk rules. We’ve developed updated versions of our ALMIS® Front Office and ALMIS® RR+ software to keep you compliant and these will be available over the coming months.
The first version, due to be released in the coming weeks, covers the NSFR changes that require banks to have stable funding to support their lending activities. We’ve developed this software in ALMIS® Front Office so it can seamlessly auto-populate the required templates in ALMIS® RR+ and work with the planning tool to forecast your NSFR exposure through the life of your corporate plan.
Shortly afterwards, our second ALMIS® Front Office release will address changes to the Standardised Approach to Counterparty Credit Risk calculations (SA-CCR). Each release will be followed up with a webinar to explain the new regulations and walk you through the new functionality.
This is so it will be compatible with the upcoming Taxonomy 3.0 templates. All of our UK bank and building society clients will need this update to comply with the regulatory reporting requirements that come into effect on 1 January 2022. The latest ALMIS® RR+ version will be released alongside the first CRR2 update so that the updated calculations will auto-populate into the regulatory reports.
Drop us a line at [email protected] and a member of our team will get in touch with you.
Joe Di Rollo
Founder and CEO of ALMIS® International
ALMIS® International in partnership with Linklaters LLP held a webinar and discussion on the prudential regulatory landscape for small/challenger banks and building societies on 3 March, 2021.
The session covered the relevant aspects of:
• EU CRR2/CRD V regime including remuneration requirements for smaller banks
• UK implementation of CRD V
• UK implementation of Basel III (according to the latest consultation papers)
• CRR Quick Fix and other relief measures
• PRA’s initiatives for a tailored prudential regime for challenger banks
• Basel 3.1 provisions relevant to small and mid-tier deposit-takers; and
• Corporate restructuring trends relating to challenger banks
Speakers:
• Colin Johnson – Chief Product Office, ALMIS® International
• Benedict James – Partner, Linklaters LLP
• Bradley Richardson – Counsel, Linklaters LLP
• Allegra Miles – Managing Professional Support Lawyer, Linklaters LLP
• Emma Clark – Counsel, Linklaters LLP
• Bobby Butcher – Managing Associate, Linklaters LLP
• Elli Karaindrou – Associate, Linklaters LLP
We’ve made a few changes at ALMIS® International to grow the business and improve the services we offer our clients.
This suite of solutions is the software of choice for over half of the building societies and many banks in the UK. Our Cobalt® Treasury Management System seamlessly integrates with ALMIS®. Because Regulatory Reporting is such an increasingly important requirement for companies, we’ve re-engineered our module from the ground up as a standalone solution in Front Office +. It’s fast, easily maintained and supports multiple taxonomies. Our aim is to make it the best Regulatory Reporting software on the market. As regulators look to get data more easily from banks, the question is, can you afford not to have it? And Middle Office +, a dedicated platform application for all balance sheet management, will be formally launched this year.
We’re constantly improving the quality of our products so that we get things right first time. By embedding this process in the whole system, we can be more focused, transparent and responsive to our clients. Over the last few years there has been more focus on information security and banking regulations around out-sourcing to the cloud. With these considerations in mind, we’re testing towards ISO27001 on recovery and resolution on ALMIS® Cloud. We deliver this service in partnership with Microsoft Azure and nearly two thirds of our clients have switched to our hosting platform.
Colin Johnson, Chief Product Officer, will now look after the client facing services while John Muir, our Chief Operating Officer, continues to focus on products and internal delivery. This includes our upgraded hosting platform, ALMIS® Cloud, and a new independent testing department led by our Quality Assurance Manager, Georgina Macleod.
We’ve also taken on eight new hires, four of whom are on our Graduate Training Programme. We also invest in training and our Senior Financial System Analyst, Luke Di Rollo, has become the first person in the company to complete the ALMA CertBALM® qualification. Scott MacLennan, our Financial System Analyst, is starting the course in March.
Virtual User Group Meetings in January 2021
Due to COVID we could not hold our usual annual gathering this year and as we look forward to 2021, in addition to our webinars, we are holding 4 product updates for giving software users development updates, and for users to share experiences and future requirements. Please register for the sessions you wish attend. Please note these are client only events.
• Latest developments
• Roadmap
• User feedback
• IRRBB, 6 shocks and an annual EVE measure, impact of near to zero and negative rates
• PRA 110 and Liquidity Management
• New CRR2 developments – a new NSFR and a look at the changes to RWA calcs, large exposures and CVA
• User feedback
• What’s new
• Customer experiences
• Product Update
• User feedback
• Where we are, and how we are getting on upgrading clients to MO+.
• How to get started with MO+
• MO+ and Power BI
ALMIS® International hosted another successful webinar with our partner and Climate Risk specialists Urgentum. This webinar is now available to view.
Urgentem are an award-winning independent provider of emissions data, climate risk analytics and advisory to the finance industry for robust carbon-investment strategies. This webinar provided an overview of climate risk to get banks and building societies up to speed on the issues that matter.
This webinar covered the full spectrum of climate risks including:
Types of Physical Risk
• Acute (extreme weather events which are becoming ever more frequent and intense)
• Chronic (accelerating sea level rises and arctic ice melt)
Types of Transition Risk
• Market
• Technology
• Policy
We explored each risk type (and their relevance) and encouraged participants to join in with questions and feedback throughout the webinar.
Urgentem speakers: Ian Stannard, Senior Engagement Manager.
UK and European Banks should now be managing IRRBB in compliance with the EBA Guidelines. In particular banks should be calculating EVE (a form of Economic Value) from the six prescribed parallel and non-parallel interest rate shock scenarios. The recently enhanced ALMIS® software delivers an automated solution to these Standardised Interest Rate Shocks, making it straightforward to comply with the quarterly test.
The guidelines apply numerous requirements to a bank’s IRRBB risk policies, processes and controls and detailed requirements for the bank’s ‘IRRBB IT system’. Unsurprisingly, the system needs the capability to calculate economic value and earnings-based measures of IRRBB, as well as other measures of IRRBB prescribed by regulators. Other more specific system requirements are complemented by requirements aimed at data quality and integrity. It is hard to envisage achieving compliance with these system requirements without an appropriate ALM solution. A look at how the six standardised interest rate shocks (‘SIRS’) are applied further demonstrates that case …
In calculating the impacts of the shocks a bank should in particular apply a list of stated principles which cover a range of topics, for example:
Banks should perform the calculations at least quarterly as prescribed in the guidelines.
where a decline in EVE exceeds 15% of Tier 1 capital under any of the scenarios the bank must inform its regulator (in addition the measurement should be included in the ICAAP).
ALMIS® International has for some time offered a SIRS solution. In the latest in our series of ALMIS® International Bank ALM client webinars, the enhanced version of the ALMIS® SIRS solution was demonstrated to clients.
The ALMIS® SIRS tool is an out the box solution, providing banks with easy to use functionality which eliminates manual processes. The software generates the required curves automatically from a single risk-free curve and then calculates and reports the EVE impact for each of the 19 prescribed time buckets for each shock. Impacts on capital and outlier test compliance are included in the suite of standard reports (including separate Basel and EBA reports).
For further information or to arrange a brief demo, please contact us on: [email protected]