Financial Architects (FinArch), international provider of a Finance Resource Planning (FRP) platform for the finance industry, today announced that it has been ranked in the top twenty of the annual Chartis RiskTech 100 report.

Chartis’ RiskTech100 report lists the top 100 risk technology vendors worldwide, and is recognized globally as the most comprehensive and prestigious study of the top technology firms active in the risk management market. In this year’s report, FinArch is named as a ‘notable improver’, climbing an impressive 11 places in the ranking, up to 18th. FinArch is also the winner of the category ‘Risk & Finance Integration’, not incidentally FinArch’s core focus, and testimony to the current demand in the market for our products. Not least for our IFRS solutions which clearly underpins the need for convergence between risk and accounting functionality.

Since its inception, FinArch has been working towards its mission to deliver an integrated platform and solutions to meet finance, risk and reporting requirements. The recent crisis urges the entire financial industry to review their entire risk and finance management system. The integration of the traditionally silo-based systems for areas as ALM, liquidity risk, market risk, and finance is unmistakably vital to meet the ever stricter and complex internal and external reporting requirements. The increased number of financial services institutions worldwide using Financial Studio clearly reflects this growing need.

With its concept of Finance Resource Planning (FRP) and its flagship Financial Studio, FinArch was the first, and is still the only provider in the market to deliver an enterprise-wide resource management and planning solution tailored to the specific demands of banks and other financial services organisations. Its integrated datamodel, supporting all banking products across retail banking, wholesale banking, investment banking, private banking, etc, delivers a “single version of the truth” by consolidating data from multiple business units and sources. Management and external reporting information is therefore sourced from an integrated and centralised environment. Consolidated valuation, pricing, risk and hedging data sourced from multiple departments and source systems supports additional analysis such as profitability, volatility and capital usage.

Dirk De Beule, CEO at FinArch, states, “Chartis’ report clearly confirms the growing need for a fully integrated system that enables banks to manage their entire risk and finance function from one single platform. This will become even more important over the coming years. Financial institutions, whether large scale or small, need to reconsider their current IT systems, processes and reporting management, and are forced to have the adequate and consistent solution, in time, to respond to the even tougher regulatory pressures and governance requirements. Only an integrated platform, with an enriched and flexible data model as ours, on which solutions are built such as IAS/IFRS, Liquidity Risk, Basel II will result in overall business efficiency.” De Beule adds: “Chartis’ report acknowledges that FinArch is the right partner for those financial institutions that are investing in cross functional areas. The current trend in internal and external reporting requirements certainly dictate a demand for such platforms. We see this time and time again where our existing customers benefit from our platform when coping with changes imposed by regulators or more advanced internal demands to monitor the business performance. It is again a confirmation of our ability to anticipate trends in the current market and remain a leading company in this space. ”

Over the past years, FinArch has received many honours and awards for its integrated offering, with most recently, Ernst & Young’s accredition of FinArch’s IAS/IFRS templates. Earlier this year, Chartis Research positioned FinArch as an established leader in its “Credit Risk Management Systems 2008” report, and Gartner ranked FinArch as in its recent operational risk management report.

Despite the crisis, 2009 has been an interesting year for FinArch. It has experienced a huge increase in its customer base, doubled its business development team, and enlarged its Professional Services team. In Spring, FinArch opened a hub in Dubai to reach out to its clients in the Middle East.