Ghana International Bank plc (GHIB), a Ghanaian-owned international Bank based in the City of London, has gone live with KnowCo’s stress-testing system, KST.

GHIB delivers banking services for Ghanaians around the globe, and for corporates doing business in Africa the Bank is a gateway to the global financial system, providing access to expertise, capital and extensive cross-border capabilities. GHIB is majority-owned by the Bank of Ghana, Ghana’s central bank, and was incorporated in London in 1998, although previously present in London since 1959 as the London branch of another shareholder, Ghana Commercial Bank.

Following an internal review of the bank’s risk management systems and processes, GHIB concluded that its plans for development and growth demanded further support in the high-focus area of stress-testing. The Bank subsequently began its search for a solution, which led to a comprehensive evaluation of competing offerings. Festus Mensah, Head of Regulatory Reporting, explains why KnowCo’s product was selected:

“We needed a system that was tried and tested, but also flexible and future-proof, and which most importantly could be scaled to match our continuous programme of risk management enhancement. After reviewing the market we found that KnowCo’s KST solution was the system which best matched our requirements, through elimination of spreadsheets and manual input associated risks, with an easy to implement and execute, auditable stress-test functionality. Backed by a responsive support team and strong domain expertise, we are better able to respond to an evolving and challenging regulatory environment.

KST meets our demanding ambitions for enhanced stress-testing to support the Bank’s plans for prudent expansion and growth. The system is highly configurable and is kept constantly up-to-date with regulatory developments.”

KnowCo’s KST is a client-server system, fed automatically with new data overnight by its data loading module. Data is captured at cash-flow level and can be rendered and reconciled to the same level of granularity.

Stress scenarios for liquidity, credit risk and IRRBB, as well as business plans and projections for the whole balance sheet, can be stored in the KnowCo database, housed in the client bank’s

production environment, and can be run at any time on any dataset, facilitating ICAAP, ILAAP and RRP production and consistency.

Out-of-the-box reporting for risk intelligence is comprehensive and easily configurable into more customised reporting for individual client requirements.

Paul Ashton, KnowCo’s Managing Director, commented “We are delighted to have added Ghana International Bank to our growing KST user-base, and we look forward to continuing to provide risk management efficiencies and enhancements supporting the Bank’s drive for controlled growth.

We believe that the KnowCo solution is the most intuitive and transparent system for smaller- to mid-sized banks on the market, providing comprehensive capabilities around stress-testing and business modelling, all built on our deep experience of bank risk management best practice and our constantly-updated knowledge of regulatory expectations.”

KnowCo is a specialist UK-bank support resource for:

• ICAAP, ILAAP and RRP
• Risk Appetite Statement development and enhancement
• Regulatory Disclosure
• Business Planning and Modelling and
• Risk Management Policies, Processes and Assurance

KnowCo’s K-ALM software suite facilitates compliance with regulatory requirements for:

• Credit risk capital (Pillars 1 and 2) stress-testing and management
• IRRBB stress-testing and management
• Liquidity risk stress-testing and management
• Funds Transfer Pricing
• Strategic business modelling
• Regulatory metrics such as LCR and HHI