Company: ABSA
Company background: Absa Group Limited is a financial services group created by the merger of four South African banks in 1981. Headquartered in Johannesburg and publicly listed on the JSE, it is a universal bancassurance group operating in fifteen countries, and one of the ‘big 5’ South African banks. It has 11.4 million customers, 35 451 employees, and US$68 billion in gross loans and advances. Being a Pan-African group, Absa is inspired by the people we serve and determined to be a globally respected organisation that Africa can be proud of. We focus on finding tailored solutions to uniquely local challenges, and everything we do focuses on creating value for our stakeholders. As a financial services provider, we play an integral role in the economic life of individuals, businesses, and nations. We empower and enable – from investing in our employees to uplifting our communities and enabling our customers’ ambitions. We unlock opportunities through imagination, energy and passion, finding innovative solutions. The South African banking sector is both well developed and competitive in terms of services, technology, and innovation. For example, Absa was the first bank in the world to launch a WhatsApp chat service, and invented card-less ATM cash withdrawals for non-account holders.
Contact: Marina Ayerst
Title: Business Owner Model Risk
Country: South Africa
Award Category: Innovative Problem Solver
Tell us about the business problem you were trying to solve?
The business was facing increasingly volatile change demands driven by Regulatory and internal pressures and the current 9.4 GRID platform would not have been able to meet these demands.
How did you use SAS to solve that business problem? What products did you use and how did you use them?
A decision was made to install Viya 4 with Workload Manager, Model Manager, Visual Machine Learning and ESM. This technology choice would align to the Group's Cloud 1st strategy and provide the business with the required additional functionality and efficiency improvements needed.
What were the results or outcomes?
The Viya modernisation resulted in a 20% improvement in processing efficiencies for the month end processes, 41% improvement for changes to existing models, and new models built on Viya showed improved processing speed and reduced base coding regardless of data size.
Why is this approach innovative?
Key partnership and joint accountability between business and technology. Strong and continued senior stakeholder support across a multiple year project. Business driven value at core of deliverables. The migration of 900 users, 500TB data, with varied and complex business outcomes enabled.
What advice would you give to new SAS users?
Have clear business imperative and objective. Ensure relevant core skills for resource allocation are clear and understood. Have a solution (not blame) mindset when challenges arise. Engage early and often with SAS partners and other technology teams. Learn from practical interaction with Viya.
