Representing an industry-led consortium, participants in the RMA/AFS Risk Analysis Service (RAS) perform actionable comparisons of their own data with that of peer banks and the industry as a whole across multiple asset types and segmentations.
AFS has worked with The Risk Management Association (RMA) for the past decade on the RAS benchmarking, both domestically and internationally, to provide unmatched strategic risk management.
The depth of analysis RAS delivers is especially important in today’s banking environment. Its benchmarking data—normalized through standard data definitions for meaningful comparability across the industry—empowers business strategy while satisfying regulators, boards of directors, and investors as they seek to understand whether your institution’s levels of risk are in relation to the industry.
RAS is easy to deploy and use. Member banks provide a quarter-end, loan-level data extract from a data warehouse or commercial lending system(s) via a secure electronic transmission to AFS, the data custodian. Data are then loaded into the RAS Workstation for on-demand access. Sophisticated enough for analyst needs—yet intuitive enough for all users—the RAS Workstation facilitates standardized peer comparison reporting, customized reports, queries targeted by specific need, and other impromptu analysis prompted by market events.
Armed with new knowledge of relative risk in your portfolio, as a RAS participant you can comprehensively manage risk and formulate business strategy by:
- Assessing the composition and performance of your portfolio
- Monitoring and managing your relative exposure to credit risk in key portfolio segments
- Relating loan performance to portfolio segments on an industry-wide basis
- Improving strategic intelligence linked to geographic and line of business growth
- Supporting compliance and disclosure
- Benchmarking risk rating parameters to market data for Basel II validation
Access the multifaceted knowledge base that RAS has to offer: actionable data, expert analysis, and peer-to-peer dialogue through quarterly standard reports, periodic Webinars, working groups, and an annual workshop.