Wealth & Finance International - Business Awards 2015

www.wealthandfinance-intl.com 35 Best for Financial Predictive Analytics Solutions - USA My fellow Accretive team members and I talk to business and technology leaders from many of the world’s largest banking and financial service institutions every week. And one of the biggest questions on every executive’s mind is, “How do we prepare for and avoid major disruptions to our business and operations?” These disruptions may be caused by external risks, like the economic meltdown of 2007 or competitive threats like Bitcoin, as well as internal failures that may be caused by numerous factors including poorly designed or aging infrastructure. Company: Accretive Technologies, Inc. Web: acrtek.com Address: 330 Madison Avenue, Sixth Floor New York, NY 10017 United States of America Phone: +1 (888) 572-2135 Email: [email protected] The institutions we talk with comply with the latest regulations, analyze terabytes of big data, use predictive analytics, and receive frequent risk management reports from all the silos of their organization, but uncertainty remains and grows uncon- tained. As our world becomes more global and technological advances accelerate change, the window of opportunity to take corrective actions when problems arise is shrinking and risks are rising. Endless amounts of time and resources are dedicated to the task of risk manage- ment, but everyone knows that the biggest threats to their business plans will be some new chain of events or unexpected surprises—none of which will be predict- ed using conventional wisdom or current predictive analytics technologies and so management will be caught completely off guard when the next crisis hits. It’s these unknowns that keep banking and financial executives awake at night— wondering how to prepare for and steer their institutions clear from that which they cannot predict. And that is precisely why Accretive is called and where our conversation begins, because Accretive provides a revolutionary solution to this age-old risk management challenge. We use big data, predictive analytics and machine learning technologies to predict future events, just like our competitors. But unlike our competitors, we do not rely solely on historical data or statistical models—we use advanced mathematical em- ulation to predict and prepare for new and never experienced events. And we are able tie together all the interconnected internal and external structures of a system to see if changes to the system will create any unexpected or undesirable impacts on the performance or cost of a system—whether the system be a settlement exchange network or the global operations of retail branches. Accretive’s predictive analytics solution, X-Act® OBC Platform, prepares executives to make better risk management decisions by pinpointing the source of potential problems and detailing the preventive actions that should be taken to ensure the continuous efficiency and cost effectiveness of operations. Everyone is curious to understand how we can do this and I must admit that some- times the solution to our problems have unexpected origins. During my doctorate work in the 1970s, I discovered how to solve complex mathematical problems, like the three-body problem of Sun-Moon-Earth that were believed to be unsolvable by Isaac Newton and other scientists who followed because the gravitational influ- ences of three or more bodies over time could not be accurately solved using the previously proposed mathematical formulae. The three-body problem of Sun-Moon-Earth is an eloquent expression of dynamic complexity whereby the motion of planets are perturbed, by the motion of other planets and vary as a function of time. I found that a three-body problem could only be solved by a sequence of highly advanced mathematical formulae. My scientific contributions were initially used by the European Space Organization to accurately predict and maintain the orbits of satellites. Later as the Chief Technol- ogy Officer of First Data Corporation, I found that business and IT systems present modelers with many of the same challenges that we faced in celestial mechanics. This is because most modern systems are dynamically complex—meaning system components are subject to the interactions, interdependencies, feedback, locks, conflicts, contentions, prioritizations, and enforcements of other components both internal and external to the system in the same way planets are influenced differ- ently over time by the gravitational pull of other planets. Despite a company’s wealth of experience, mature risk management practices and deep domain expertise, sometimes the organization will be caught off guard by an unexpected risk or sudden decrease in system performance. This is because current risk management practices pretend that systems are static and operate in a closed-loop environment. As a result our risk management capabilities are limited to known risks within unchanging systems. And so, we remain heavily reliant on perception and intuition for the assessment and remediation of risk. Risk management is commonly defined as the identification, assessment and prior- itization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events‪ or to maximize the realization of opportunities. However, we as citizens, businesses, governments, environments and world economies have suffered from a number of disasters in the recent past that have greatly deflected us from our intended goals. Many of these disasters have appeared as surprises and their impacts have been significant. In retrospect, we can observe that the people in charge of risk manage- ment in these cases were either unaware of the risk or did not correctly quantify it. The recognition of Accretive’s X-Act OBC Platform as ‘Best for Financial Predictive Analytics Solutions – USA’ by Wealth and Finance International is encouraging. It shows that we not only have the right solution to address this growing problem of predictability in risk management, but also that we offer a unique solution that is greatly needed by banks and financial institutions today.