BearingPoint launches new generation of the recognized Abacus platform

Stockholm, June 29, 2017 – Management and technology consultancy BearingPoint, which ranks among the leading providers of Risk and Regulatory Technology (RiskTech/RegTech), announced today that the first release of the new software generation for banks, Abacus360 Banking, has been delivered.

BearingPoint had announced at its annual user conference in November 2015 that it would develop a new generation of the recognized Abacus platform. Main drivers for the decision are regulatory and technological developments of recent years. Based on a new generation engine, Abacus360 Banking will cover all existing Abacus regulatory and risk modules. It will also provide additional components enriching the functional scope by an intelligent toolset allowing for tailor-made optimization of regulatory reporting processes, regulatory analytics and regulatory management.

Bodo Windmoeller, Partner at BearingPoint, said: "Both supervisory authorities and regulated firms need new technological solutions that improve efficiency of regulatory processes. Financial supervision is strongly driven by data. Vast amounts of data at increasingly granular levels have to be processed. Deadlines for implementation of new regulations are getting shorter, costs are rising. These trends and challenging new regulations like AnaCredit, BCBS 239, FRTB and IFRS 9 were motivation to make a strategic investment in a new software generation. Abacus360 is a modular, scalable platform that integrates functionality for regulatory reporting, risk calculations, and analytics and offers additional components that go far beyond the previous capabilities of Abacus”

Sven Mueller, Partner at BearingPoint, commented: "Abacus360 is the result of more than 20 years of experience in regulation, combined with innovative technologies like in-memory processing, grid architectures and cloud. The new platform is scalable in high-performance environments and facilitates faster processing times, cost-effective scalability, higher transparency and more agility in terms of faster implementation of new regulatory requirements. To clients, who want to use a high-performance environment without building it by themselves, we offer tailored managed services.”

The business functionality of the new platform is being developed in close collaboration with pilot customers from the existing Abacus users. Pilot customers include DZ BANK AG, the central institution for co-operative banks, Berlin Hyp, one of the large German Pfandbrief banks, and Bank fuer Sozialwirtschaft (BFS), among others. These institutions have decided for the new platform for various reasons.

“We decided on Abacus360, because the new platform enables us to fulfill regulatory requirements in a secure and efficient manner. In particular, we want to further standardize, automate and thereby accelerate processes within DZ BANK AG and within the group. Moreover, we would like to increase flexibility in order to respond also to unexpected short-term requests.”
Peter Stutz, Head of Department Group Finance Regulatory Law, DZ BANK AG

“We decided on Abacus360, because it allows us to make our regulatory processes more transparent, efficient, better performing and secure. From our perspective, the new platform comes at the right time – the rapidly changing regulatory requirements are calling for innovative technical solutions like Abacus360.”
Thomas Haeske, Division Manager Organization/IT at Berlin Hyp

“Our key objective for piloting Abacus360 is the replacement of all Excel-based individual data processing solutions. With Abacus360, we create for our organization a holistic platform covering applications for regulatory analytics and bank management alongside the traditional reporting components.”
Christof Wasser, Senior Head of Department Regulatory Reporting & Data Quality Management, Bank fuer Sozialwirtschaft AG

Abacus360 Banking fulfils the BCBS 239 principles for risk data aggregation and reporting. The new platform integrates reporting, risk, and finance applications based on one single data model and thus complies with the requirements for data consistency across departments defined in BCBS 239. Abacus360 Banking also meets the requirements of data lineage through the Complete Audit Trail (CAT).

The first business module that will be available on the new platform is AnaCredit (Analytical Credit Datasets), the new regulation of the European Central Bank (ECB) for the collection of statistical data on a loan-by-loan basis, which will come into force from December 31, 2017.

A major innovation of Abacus360 is the optimization of reporting processes in terms of a “reporting at the push of a button”. With the new software generation, regulatory processes become fundamentally more transparent, efficient and high-performing. Core of the new platform is one single data model that allows for long-term maintainability even under constantly changing framework conditions.

In the first quarter 2016, Abacus360 has been delivered to pilot customers. Since June 2016, all clients and prospects have the opportunity to test the new platform including the AnaCredit module as an on-premise installation or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

The Abacus360 roadmap and use cases will be presented at the upcoming 24^th RegTech Convention at the end of November in Frankfurt.

For more information about BearingPoint’s RegTech product line, please visit: http://www.reg.tech.