Business Services Industry

LeasePlan Has Money to Spend Thanks to SAS; Ready for Basel II with SAS® Credit Risk Management

Business Wire, Dec 14, 2005

CARY, N.C. -- LeasePlan Corporation, which has a lease portfolio of 1.2 million vehicles worldwide and has had bank status since 1993, is implementing SAS(R) Credit Risk Management. This solution will help LeasePlan Corporation to comply with the Basel II banking regulations and could lead to an expansion of its working capital. Thanks to the SAS implementation, LeasePlan Corporation hopes to be able to free up more of its capital reserve allowing the group to literally spend more money such as investing in more cars for customer use.

Credit Risk Management

SAS Credit Risk Management comprises the analysis methods needed to accurately assess the level of risk as laid out in the Basel II regulations, for example Probability of Default, Loss Given Default and Exposure at Default. Also, SAS Credit Risk Management includes methodologies that go further than the mandatory risk management, such as Economic Capital and Risk Adjusted Return on Capital . SAS Credit Risk Management will allow LeasePlan to meet Basel II compliance on time and further professionalize the credit risk management processes.

The solution is based on the SAS(R) 9 platform, which addresses data integration, storage and analysis as well as reporting. The specific advantage of the underlying SAS 9 platform is that it reduces the complexity of sharing data and applications which makes for faster implementation, free of (technical) risks.

"SAS Credit Risk Management is a perfect fit for anyone needing to comply with Basel II," said Remco den Heijer, business unit manager of financial services at SAS Netherlands. "Using the SAS solution the overall credit risk can be accurately assessed and reported on."

Edwin de Jong, senior vice president of risk management at LeasePlan Corporation endorses that: "There are other risk management solutions. We have chosen SAS because this gives us an integrated solution which really stands out in practice when it comes to Basel II."

Exemplary cooperation

In addition to choosing SAS, LeasePlan selected Business & Decision as a partner. De Jong: "We'd already had good experience with Business & Decision when they carried out the preliminary research. Then they offered to show us SAS Credit Risk Management working on site with an enthusiastic user. That was pretty convincing." The agreement is for a period of three years and delivery by Business & Decision will be in Spring 2006.

Basel II: risk sensitive capital reserve

The solvency demands placed by De Nederlandsche Bank on credit institutions amount to 8%, a figure laid down in the Capital Accord 'Basel I' which dates from 1988. Starting in 2007, 'Basel II' will replace its predecessor. This latest Capital Accord opens up new opportunities for banks as it makes it possible to maintain a risk sensitive capital reserve for their loans. For LeasePlan, complying with the Basel II advanced approach means freeing up capital, since LeasePlan has many high-quality corporate debtors. Compliance with Basel II gives LeasePlan more freedom with its capital, but Basel II also means that banks must have a better grip on their financial risks in general.

About LeasePlan

With LeasePlan as its principal brand, LeasePlan Corporation is the European market leader in fleet management and one of the leading global players with offices in 26 countries. Founded in 1963, LeasePlan manages a total of 1.2 million vehicles. In the Netherlands, LeasePlan is a member of VNA and manages about 140,000 vehicles.

Business & Decision

The international company Business & Decision (quoted on the stock exchange, 1200 employees in Europe) is specialized in business intelligence, risk management, fraud detection and customer intelligence. In the Benelux the company has a close working relationship with SAS which has resulted, for example, in expertise centers for risk management and marketing automation.

About SAS

SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at 40,000 sites - including 96 of the top 100 companies on the FORTUNE Global 500(R) - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R). Visit us at www.sas.com.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. (R) indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.