Banks looking for advanced measurement approaches for assessment and management of operational risk require a comprehensive framework for capital estimation, 'which incorporates loss events across the enterprise,' according to SAS (News - Alert) officials.

With that advance need in mind, SAS officials say, Union Bank, N.A. has selected SAS, a business analytics software and services vendor, to 'help manage risk more efficiently and with more rigor.'

Headquartered in San Francisco, UnionBanCal Corporation is a financial holding company with assets of $78 billion at September 30, 2009. Its primary subsidiary, Union Bank NA, is a full-service commercial bank.

A little more efficiency and rigor never hurt anyone. Union Bank is familiar with SAS risk management software, as they selected SAS for credit risk management in May 2009.

Union Bank determined that SAS OpRisk VaR, an analytic value at risk model, would help the organizations 'slice, dice, drill down, adjust, trend and plot operational loss data at will,' following a 'transparent, intuitive and sequential' process.

“We saw SAS software rated highly by analyst research firms and customers for operational risk,” said Greg Jones, Vice President of Operational Risk at Union Bank. “SAS offered a product that specifically addressed operational risk with customizable modeling capabilities.”

In addition to the SAS reputation and external recognition, Union Bank was impressed with specific capabilities of SAS OpRisk VaR. The SAS software offered “extreme value theory' for assessing risk for highly unusual events, and “component sensitivity analysis,” which gauges how sensitive a model is to changes in certain parameters.

Bank officials say they liked how the SAS tool was also capable of weighing internal and external loss data.