A Snapshot of SAS Risk Explorer Features

Introduction

SAS Risk Engine provides a facility via SAS Risk Explorer to explore risk analysis results in a dynamic manner. At its core, SAS Risk Explorer is designed to help organizations aggregate, analyze, and visualize risk across portfolios. It provides a unified view of various risk types—credit, market, operational—enabling institutions to assess exposures and make informed decisions.

SAS Risk Explorer

SAS Risk Explorer provides a rich and flexible environment that enables users to deeply explore and interpret their analysis results rather than just viewing static outputs. It offers a wide range of built-in tools and techniques that make it easier to interact with risk data, uncover insights, and support informed decision-making.

For detailed information on

SAS Risk Explorer and SAS Risk Engine,

please refer to the following:

SAS Risk Engine Help Documentation

At a fundamental level, SAS Risk Explorer allows users to add results into a new risk exploration workspace, where multiple outputs can be analyzed together in a cohesive manner. This helps in comparing different scenarios, portfolios, or model outputs without needing to switch between multiple reports. Within this workspace, users have the flexibility to add or remove output variables, enabling them to focus only on the most relevant metrics—such as exposure, loss estimates, or risk measures—depending on the analysis objective.

A particularly powerful feature is the ability to use cross-classification variables. These allow users to segment and drill down into results across multiple dimensions, such as geography, product type, customer segment, or risk grade. By doing so, analysts can identify patterns, concentrations, and anomalies that may not be visible at an aggregated level. For example, a high-level portfolio risk might appear acceptable, but cross-classification could reveal that a specific region or sector is contributing disproportionately to that risk.

In addition to tabular exploration, SAS Risk Explorer supports graphical visualization of results, making it easier to interpret complex datasets. Users can view outputs in the form of charts and graphs, which helps in quickly identifying trends, outliers, and relationships. Visual representations are especially useful when communicating insights to stakeholders who may not be deeply technical.

However, to access and explore results within SAS Risk Explorer, it is essential that the underlying analytical pipeline is properly configured. Specifically, the pipeline must include:

The Evaluate Portfolio node, which performs the core risk calculations and generates the analytical outputs
The Save Environment node, which stores these results so they can be accessed and explored within the interface

Without these components, the results will not be available for interactive exploration.

One of the most powerful capabilities of SAS Risk Explorer is the flexibility it offers in creating customized views of your risk data. Rather than being limited to predefined reports, users can build their own analytical views by selecting the data elements that are most relevant to their analysis. This allows risk analysts to answer specific business questions without modifying the underlying risk models or generating new reports.

Illustration of SAS Risk Explorer Interface

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The Data pane serves as the starting point for this customization. It contains all the available data elements that can be used in an exploration, including class variables, risk cubes, time horizons, output variables, and statistics. Users simply drag and drop these items onto the exploration canvas to create interactive cross-tabulations and visualizations.

Key Features

Several features enhance your capability to analyze your risk effectively. These are briefly described as the following:

Multiple Pages

A risk exploration can contain multiple pages, which can be used to present different views of the data. Each page can have one or more data sources. You can have one or more objects on a page. There is no limit to the number of pages in a risk exploration.

To add a new page to a risk exploration, click + sign to the right of the first page tab (or the last page tab that was added) in the risk exploration. The new page appears to the right of the existing page or pages.

Illustration of multiple pages or tabs.

Crosstabs

A crosstab displays the intersections of data items (for example, variables, horizons, and statistics). Each cell in a crosstab contains the aggregated statistic for a specific intersection of data items.

A page in a risk exploration can contain multiple crosstabs. Each crosstab can be used to present data for different data sources or to present different views of the same data source.

To add a new crosstab to a page, first open the desired page from the Pages pane. Then click the Data button to display the Data pane and select the appropriate data source, noting that a crosstab can be linked to only one data source at a time. Next, click the Objects button to access the Objects pane, and either drag the Crosstab object onto the page or right-click it and choose the option to add it directly to the selected page.

Illustration of a transposed crosstab.

Charts and Plots

SAS Risk Explorer offers a variety of visualization options to help you better understand your data, including bar charts, line charts, density plots, distribution plots, and comparison plots. The specific visualization objects available depend on factors such as the selected statistics, time horizons, and the type of risk environment being analysed (for example, stress or pricing scenarios).

To add a chart or plot to the risk exploration, right-click a data cell in the crosstab. The pop-up menu lists the visualization options for that cell, along with any other actions that you can perform.

Export Data and Plots to Microsoft Excel

To export data to Microsoft Excel in SAS Risk Explorer, you can choose from several options depending on what you want to export. To export an entire page, click the More button in the risk exploration toolbar, select “Export this page to Excel,” choose the panels you need, and click Apply—each panel will be saved as a separate sheet within the Excel workbook. If you want to export a specific crosstab, click the Options button in the crosstab toolbar and select “Export to Excel.” Similarly, to export the underlying data of a chart, use the Options button within the plot and choose “Export to Excel”.

External Links

An external link allows you to access additional details about a selected item within a risk exploration. For example, it can be used to quickly navigate to more information about a department, a stock, a trader, or other relevant entities, providing deeper context beyond the immediate analysis.

Property Panel: Features for View Enhancements

The Properties panel is your central workspace for customizing and refining your exploration view. It provides a comprehensive set of options that help you control how data is organized, displayed, and analyzed, making it easier to focus on the insights that matter most. Whether you want to adjust the layout, filter data, organize hierarchies, or enhance visual interpretation, the Properties panel gives you the flexibility to tailor the exploration to your specific analytical needs.

Options

The Options section allows you to control the overall presentation of your exploration. You can modify how calculations and results are displayed to improve readability and interpretation. For example, you can configure confidence intervals for statistical measures, transpose rows and columns to change the report orientation, indent rows for better hierarchy visualization, or include totals and subtotals to summarize data. These settings help present your analysis in a format that best suits your reporting and decision-making requirements.

Filters

The Filters section enables you to display only the data that is relevant to your analysis. By applying filters to cross-classification variables, you can quickly isolate specific subsets of data without changing the underlying dataset. For example, you might choose to view results only for a particular region, business unit, product line, or customer segment. Filtering helps reduce clutter, making it easier to identify trends and draw meaningful conclusions.

Illustration of Filter pane with a filter.

Hierarchies

The Hierarchies section allows you to create, edit, and reorganize hierarchical relationships within your data. Hierarchies help structure complex datasets into logical groups, making navigation and analysis more intuitive. For instance, you can group individual products into product categories, organize branches under regional offices, or arrange departments within business divisions. Well-designed hierarchies simplify reporting by enabling analysis at multiple levels of detail.

Illustration of Hierarchies pane.

Display Rules

The Display Rules section lets you apply conditional formatting to emphasize significant values in your exploration. By using color coding and formatting rules, you can quickly identify important patterns, exceptions, or potential risks. For example, you might configure all Value at Risk (VaR) values exceeding a specified threshold to appear in red, while values within acceptable limits remain green. This visual emphasis allows analysts to identify critical results at a glance without manually reviewing every value.

Illustration of Display Rules pane with rule description.

Comparison Plots

The Comparison Plots section provides additional customization options for comparison charts. You can apply filters to both statistics and cross-classification variables, allowing you to compare selected data points more effectively. For example, you might compare VaR values across different geographic regions, business units, investment portfolios, or financial instruments. These customized comparison plots make it easier to identify performance differences, evaluate trends, and communicate analytical findings through clear visualizations.

Conclusion

SAS Risk Explorer goes beyond being a simple reporting interface—it is an interactive analytical environment that enables risk professionals to transform complex risk data into meaningful business insights. By combining flexible data exploration, intuitive visualizations, cross-classification analysis, customizable layouts, and powerful filtering capabilities, it allows users to investigate risk from multiple perspectives without requiring extensive manual effort.

Whether you are analysing portfolio exposures, comparing scenarios, identifying concentrations of risk, or preparing reports for stakeholders, SAS Risk Explorer provides the tools needed to perform these tasks efficiently within a single workspace. Features such as multiple pages, crosstabs, charts, external links, Excel export, conditional formatting, and hierarchical data organization make it easier to navigate large volumes of analytical results and focus on the information that matters most.

Although this article provides only a snapshot of its capabilities, SAS Risk Explorer offers many additional features that can further enhance risk analysis and reporting. As organizations continue to manage increasingly complex risk landscapes, leveraging these interactive exploration capabilities can significantly improve analytical efficiency, support better-informed decisions, and help uncover insights that might otherwise remain hidden.

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