Congratulations to Celent's Model Risk Manager 2023 Award winners: Bank of America, CIBC, Enfuce Financial Services, Fifth Third Bank, HSBC, Societe Generale, Truist Financial Corporation, and VP Bank.
Detailed case studies and video interviews on the winning initiatives are available as noted below.
Model Risk Manager of the Year 2023 Award Winner: HSBC - Cloud-Based Financial Crime Detection at Scale
Category: Financial Crime Compliance
Synopsis: HSBC implemented a cloud-based AI platform as its primary AML transaction monitoring system. The new system was developed in partnership with Google, which provides the core AI platform and runs it on the Google cloud. HSBC contributes its domain expertise in financial crime detection and its massive amounts of data upon which to train the AI models. Celent sees this as a significant initiative in terms of the overall transition of risk functions to a digital footing.
Winner: Bank of America - Virtual On Watch
Category: Operational Resilience
Synopsis: Bank of America's Operational Intelligence team developed Virtual On Watch to automate incident response workflows. The tool automates and orchestrates communication and collaboration of the response team as well as provides them with near real-time intelligence to enable accurate decisions during triages. This has resulted in a 33% drop in time to resolution for major service-related incidents in the retail bank.
Winner: CIBC - Centralized AI and ML Cloud Platform
Category: Data Management and Analytics
Synopsis: To facilitate adoption of AI and Machine Learning across the bank, CIBC built a shared AI/ML Platform in the Cloud. By taking care of governance and security concerns up front, lines of business can quickly, efficiently and safely adopt and scale these capabilities, benefitting from enterprise scale and shared services, alongside open source offerings, all with the scalable power and leading capabilities of the public Cloud. Clients benefit from the personalization, convenience and speed of AI/ML powered solutions across the bank, not only in particular lines of business.
Winner: Enfuce - Card Fraud Prevention as a Service
Category: Financial Crime Compliance
Synopsis: To provide its clients with advanced protection against fraud, cloud-based card processor Enfuce implemented Featurespace, an AI platform for fraud detection. Enfuce also provides a managed service around fraud alerting and analysis. The real-time cloud-based solution enables Enfuce to quickly respond to frauds as they emerge and to update models to prevent similar frauds--an innovative aspect of this project.
Winner: Fifth Third Bank - Excelling at Climate Risk Management
Category: Responding to Emerging Risks
Synopsis: Growing regulatory focus and investor pressure are making climate risk assessment an imperative at banks. Fifth Third stands out as one of the early movers in measuring and monitoring transition risk’s impact on its commercial loan portfolio. Fifth Third has been excelling in this feat as a result of four critical elements: strong risk governance foundation, a data-driven approach, strong vendor partnership, and effective employee education.
Winner: Societe Generale - Automating Communications Surveillance in Capital Markets
Category: Operationalizing Regtech
Synopsis: As the communications channels used in capital markets trading proliferated and became more digital, Societe Generale identified a need to modernize its approach to trade surveillance. After finding no commercially available software that could meet their needs, the bank decided to build the capability in house, using best of breed technologies like big data analysis, natural language processing, and AI. The project is impressive in its use of new, often open source technologies, and in terms of its scale.
Winner: Truist Financial Corporation - Locking Out Fraud With Biometrics
Category: Responding to Emerging Risks
Synopsis: Truist devised a method for customers to turn off their password and instead use biometrics to login to their accounts. "Locking” their passwords in this way protects accounts from credential stuffing, one of the most common fraud tactics. The initiative is aimed at educating Truist's large retail client base and converting them to stronger, zero trust security. By preventing fraud losses, promoting security awareness, and mitigating reputational risk, the project positions Truist as a leader in account security.
Winner: VP Bank - Reducing Op Risk Through Automation
Category: Data Management and Analytics
Synopsis: With rising foreign investment in Vietnam, VP Bank wanted to offer their corporate customers currency and interest rate swaps, but the banks’ core systems couldn’t handle the complexity. VP Bank implemented the Kondor Treasury system to automate processes. Result: VP Bank became the only bank that could mark-to-market on a daily basis and the only bank to conform with both Vietnamese Accounting Standards and IFRS. We selected VP Bank for this award because they are a leading example of a risk management capability becoming a differentiation point for product sales.
