Innovative Excellence: The Outstanding Features of SAS Model Risk Management (As of 2024.07)

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As businesses and individuals seek efficiency, productivity, and all-around simplicity, the demand for easy-to-use software is more prevalent. In this post, we will explore the many important features of SAS Model Risk Management and how it exemplifies innovative excellence in the Risk Industry.

SAS Model Risk Management (SAS MRM) is a software solution that helps identify, monitor, and manage model risk in financial institutions, ensuring robust internal controls and effective governance. In other words, it helps enforce all risk policy and regulations. With SAS Model Risk Management, you can better mitigate risk by gaining greater insight into model risk concentrations, keeping up with changing risk policies and regulations, centralizing model information management, and documenting and tracking the model throughout the life cycle.

User-Friendly & Customizable

Out-of-the-box Templates

The SAS Model Risk Management user interface stands out for its user-friendly design, which caters to both tech-savvy individuals and those with minimal coding experience. Its intuitive drag-and-drop functionality (Risk Cirrus Builder) allows users to customize SAS Model Risk Management to fit their business needs. Moreover, SAS Model Risk Management comes equipped with a variety of pre-built workflow templates that serve as a starting point for various projects, making it accessible for users of all skill levels. Some of the business objects with out-of-the-box (OOTB) workflow templates includes:

• Action Plans (NEW)
• Models
• Model Reviews
• Model Attestations
• Inventory Attestations
• & more.

Block UI Builder

SAS Risk Cirrus Builder allows its users to drag and drop components to customize pages, objects, edit menus, enable/disable page configurations, and manage how pages and objects interact with each other. These are called Interactions.

Interactions within SAS Risk Cirrus Builder are scripts used to control how the user interacts with the solution and how different components interact with each other. It also allows the use of JavaScript (Script Editor) libraries and functions in a user-friendly way, providing access to additional SAS MRM functionality. SAS MRM on Viya ships with many OOTB interaction. Some examples of use cases for Interactions include:

• Set and loading menus.
• Setting the visibility of a field based on a selected value of a drop down.
• Validating text entered by the user into a text box.
• Retrieving the value of a custom property.
• Calling a function to retrieve a user’s email, name, current date, etc.
• Setting which fields are visible or mandatory when a page loads.
• & many more.

These are just some of the ways you can use SAS Risk Cirrus Builder Interactions to fit the solution to your business needs. Interactions can be created and edited through a sequence of logical steps (Interactions Editor) or through the Script Editor in SAS Risk Cirrus Builder.

Note: Complex customizations can complicate maintenance, support, and merging with new releases. So, if you do make customizations, keep it as simple as possible, document it thoroughly, or consider raising a feature request.

This is an example of how Interactions are used to calculate the overall materiality score for a Materiality Assessment Questionnaire.

Dashboard & Trend Reports

Similarly, to UI customization, there are customizations you can make to the Dashboard and Trend reports in the SAS Model Risk Management solution. SAS MRM automatically deploys a reporting (CAS) library and an OOTB SAS Visual Analytics report that users can use to create dynamic visual reports about the state of their model inventory. To view these reports, you must be a member of the MRM: Report Viewers group or the SASAdministrators group and data must be loaded into the report. The report layout can also be configured in Risk Cirrus Builder using the Layout Properties.

The Dashboard Report provides a visual representation of all your model inventory data from Models in Production to Materiality by Geography to Findings by Severity, and so on. There is a lot you can do to fit the OOTB Dashboard report to your business needs. The Trend Report addresses the ability to see trends in certain areas of SAS Model Risk Management as well as trends over time of results from various assessments and approved risk rating. This can be done through SAS Visual Analytics. It comes with SAS Model Risk Management along with SAS Environment Manager, SAS Workflow Manager, and SAS Cirrus Builder.

Workflow Templates

As mentioned earlier, there are many pre-built templates for various object workflows. SAS Workflow Manager provides the tools to rapidly integrate fundamental workflow management into your business operations and offerings. Some popular workflow features within SAS MRM include systematic routing of tasks requiring manual intervention and automated triggering of basic actions and alerts. Workflow notifications can be set up to alert users of different tasks in the workflow, such as when a model has been created, when the Model Risk Management Group (MRMG) has approved an object, etc.

Automation

Model Attestations

In SAS MRM, Model Attestations is the model governance process through which model risk personnel ensure that the firm’s model inventory is complete and accurate. This should be completed once a year and considers the entire model inventory. This is accomplished by asking Model owners and Model attestation sponsors of the status of the current models in the inventory, if any current models have had any changed materiality, or if new models have been added to the inventory since the last attestation. A script can be run in the Inventory Attestation object to create Model Attestations for each model that is for a particular classification. This can also be done manually, but if you have a model inventory of 1000 models, manual model attestation creation can be tedious.

Model Performance Reviews + Automated Findings Generation

Model Reviews are the central piece of model performance monitoring in SAS Model Risk Management. This object can be used to perform annual reviews, full scope validations, model performance reviews, and other reviews of models. During the Model Performance Reviews workflow, the model developers will get back testing results from an external source and attach that file into Performance Assessment tab. The results can come from any source, but they must be provided in a specific format. Currently, SAS MRM does not execute backtesting results; it only evaluates those results against KPI thresholds defined in a Monitoring Plan. This will give modeling team members a summary of the results and tell them how many Findings, if any, will be created. (Note: Findings are issues noticed during a model review, validation, or at any time that present weaknesses or shortcomings in the model.) Findings are automatically generated from any KPIs that breached a threshold.

Artificial Intelligence

AI Governance

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the formalities of how model risk management is being integrated into banking. There are challenges of course, such as bias, security concerns, and transparency that must be addressed. SAS Model risk Management establishes consistent standards for all AI initiatives by bringing together multiple risk disciplines. It clearly defines ownership and AI accountabilities across stakeholder groups and establishes mechanisms for centralized reporting and issue remediation. Plus, SAS MRM differentiates AI governance needs based on usage & risk. As AI and technology changes, SAS Model Risk management will continue to continue to evolve and adapt to the latest regulatory changes to meet all your business needs.

Linkage to various SAS products

SAS Model Risk Management can link to many other SAS products:

SAS Risk Modeling – helps to develop, validate, deploy, and track risk models in-house. It has data management, data mining, machine learning, and reporting capabilities.

SAS Model Manager – allows you to unify model assets, validate, and deploy models, monitor, detect, and alert those models, and streamline MLOps processes.

SAS Visual Analytics – allows you to create and share interactive reports and dashboards and use self-service analytics to quickly assess probable outcomes for smarter, more data-driven decisions.

SAS Information Catalog - used as the repository of metadata, including information on entities, attributes, relationships, and domains. It enables you to discover and document how data fits together, plus it provides a common vocabulary around data.

In conclusion, SAS Model Risk Management stands out as a powerhouse in the realm of model governance. With its commitment to continuous enhancement and adaptation, it consistently evolves to meet the dynamic needs of its users. The platform offers a highly customizable interface, out-of-the-box automation that simplifies complex tasks, and the ability to define AI/ML models with a few clicks, making it an indispensable tool for effective model management.

For more information on the newest release of SAS Model Risk Management, please refer to the What's New section of the documentation.

For more information on SAS Model Risk Management, click here.

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