Using SAS Analytics, Nottingham Building Society is able to offer improved risk management, make informed credit decisions, and provide even better customer service.

Nottingham Building Society is one of the top 20 most successful regional building societies in the UK, focused on residential and buy-to-let mortgages, secured business lending, investments and insurance. As a major lending institute the Society took a strategic decision to enhance its credit risk management capability, to aid business decisions and satisfy regulatory demands.

Diane Grundy, Credit Analytics Manager, Nottingham Building Society said: "SAS analytics enables us to offer even better risk management through improved knowledge of customers. We can identify potential losses and calculate capital requirements. We also use SAS to report to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the ratings agency, with the ability to react quickly in providing complex information, whilst SAS also helps us to identify financial crime and fraud risks."

SAS Business Analytics was implemented to help the Society protect its business and focus on performance while improving customer service. "The more information you have, the better informed are decisions you make involving customers," says Grundy. "SAS was essential. I considered other solutions but knew SAS was right for us. I'd used it at a major bank so I knew SAS as a leader in business analytics and an industry standard. I've always found it to be very effective and excellent value for money - I couldn't think of not working with SAS."

The desktop-based SAS Analytics Pro solution was first deployed in credit risk and is gradually being embedded in the business, most recently into Compliance. Data sources include all the Society's application processing systems and behavioural monitoring systems. A recent addition to the solution is SAS/ACCESS Interface to ORACLE that, Grundy says, enables the team to easily access the transactional database for savings accounts. To comply with legislation, the Society has to have a system in place to prevent its products or services being used to further financial crime, so it is imperative that unusual patterns of behaviour are quickly identified. "Accessing this information so easily and regularly means we look at patterns of behaviour that suggest a problem to enhance service and allow appropriate action."

Duncan Ash, Financial Service Strategy & Marketing Manager, SAS UK states: "Investing in the business and long-term goals is vital, especially when preparing for an economic recovery. Some financial institutes will be less prepared to cover risk, which will impact their trading position. SAS' software enables Nottingham Building Society to improve performance, counteract risk effectively and better support the future business and lending strategy."