Chartis, the provider of research on the global market for risk technology, has published a new report that for the first time quantifies in dollar terms the risk associated with End User Computing (EUC) errors. The report estimates that the EUC Value at Risk (VaR) for the 50 largest Financial Institutions is over $12 billion dollars. The VaR calculation does not take into account secondary effects such as regulatory fines, reputational damage, and loss of customers that Chartis believes could be significantly larger than the direct losses outlined in the report. ClusterSeven collaborated with Chartis on the report.

This report seeks to explore the financial losses associated with the improper use of systems that non-programmers use to develop working applications. EUC systems include spreadsheets, databases and end user developed code and models.

Financial institutions and consulting firms will be able to apply the methodology described in the report to their own private datasets of historic EUC-related losses to quantify their EUC risk and to use the results to build a business case for implementing EUC risk management systems and processes.

Chartis, Incisive Media and ClusterSeven will also be hosting an on-demand webinar on EUC Risk. The webinar titled “Undervalued and Undetected: End-User Computing Risk – The Elephant in the Room” will be available on June 7, 2016. You can register for the webinar here.

“Unfortunately many firms invest in EUC risk management solutions after a significant loss event occurs,” stated Peyman Mestchian, Managing Partner at Chartis. “It is important that firms take EUC risk more seriously and not only embrace a good EUC risk culture, but proactively invest in comprehensive EUC risk management processes and systems.”

“As the Chartis report points out, loss events can occur in critical EUC applications due to a number of issues including input errors, data omission, or a formatting error,” said Chris Gomersall, CEO of ClusterSeven. “These events can be disastrous to both a firm’s bottom line and its reputation. Our solutions help identify the critical EUC applications that are in use throughout the organisation and reduce EUC risk by providing a governance platform that non-intrusively manages all the EUC applications and tools.”

The report titled “Quantification of End User Computing Risk in Financial Services” is available for download here: http://www2.clusterseven.com/EUCRisk.