Deloitte and SAS announce cooperation agreement to address complex risk and regulatory calculations at scale and turn compliance into an opportunity

Toronto, June 5, 2018 - To further help their Canadian insurance and banking clients navigate today’s heightened regulatory environment, Deloitte Canada and the Canadian subsidiary of SAS announced a new cooperation agreement in support of their existing strategic alliance that will leverage the organizations’ combined expertise and introduce lower-risk and higher-quality outcomes to the marketplace.

Given the extensive compliance requirements surrounding International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 9 and IFRS 17, the agreement will give clients access to a robust arsenal of technology and delivery expertise. “We are pleased to include SAS in our arsenal of technology solutions. We are now even better equipped with a range of technology capabilities to help our clients replace unsustainable processes with value-added capabilities to meet pressing regulatory requirements, make informed decisions and drive profitable growth in their business,” says Ranjit Chima, Director, Consulting at Deloitte. Deloitte will scale up and certify functional and technology consultants to meet market demand for IFRS transformational solutions.

“IFRS 9 demanded banks and financial institutions meet a new set of standards for reporting. This created a whole new burden of governance and controls—and a huge change in the IT infrastructure that supports it,” says Mahdi Amri, partner at Deloitte. “Our agreement with SAS will help our clients take their IFRS compliance program to the next level—and transform it into a catalyst for change that will improve operational excellence.”

The new regulations will require a significant overhaul of financial systems, processes and accounting and disclosure policies—and will undoubtedly dwarf IFRS 9 in terms of the required organizational commitment. With IFRS 17—which targets insurance providers and is scheduled to become effective January 1, 2021—compliance requirements are expected to be even more daunting.

“IFRS 9 and IFRS 17 present an opportunity to not only address compliance with advanced modeling, simulations and machine learning, but also to further streamline the report to disclose workflow process, and improve business partnering in an otherwise very costly, multi-year and human capital intensive mandate. These mandates require our clients to deal with terabytes of data at the operational, actuarial, risk and accounting levels on a monthly basis,” says Nat D’Ercole, partner at Deloitte. “SAS brings leading capabilities in IFRS calculation engines, advanced analytics, workflow, data management and visualization to support compliance calculations at scale with data lineage and transparency. When coupled with robust accounting platforms, performance management platforms and Deloitte’s program leadership, it provides clients with a compelling and distinctive value proposition in the market to support multiple regulations in an organization.”

“To effectively navigate today’s regulatory environment, organizations must develop compliance frameworks that fit their overall business strategies and specific markets. A one-size-fits-all compliance formula simply doesn’t work,” says Pat Finerty, Vice President Alliances and Business Development at SAS. “SAS provides the sophisticated tools for compliance, enhancing compliance around a specific regulation to enable solutions that can evolve in pace with regulations over time. Our agreement with Deloitte offers the market a wide range of scenarios—including on-site, insight-as-a-service and managed solution offerings by Deloitte to help companies efficiently manage their costs and resource commitments. Deloitte is a global SAS Business Partner and has experience successfully implementing SAS risk management, regulatory and AI enabled business solutions. Together with Deloitte’s leadership, we are taking our ability to execute complex transformative programs to the next level and providing our clients a stronger and integrated technology foundation to drive greater ROI from their multi-regulatory compliance mandates.”

Even though the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is executed by Canada, it includes a framework that can be adopted by Deloitte member firms and SAS corporate affiliates in other countries.

On April 8th, 2018 Deloitte was recognized by SAS as its 2017 global partner of the year and also received awards for regional partner of the year in Canada and Latin America and the sub-regional partner of the year for the United Kingdom and Ireland. “We are excited about coupling this recognition with our new cooperation agreement to globally work together in serving our clients with distinction in their risk management, regulatory and AI enabled initiatives”, says Nat D’Ercole, partner at Deloitte.

About Deloitte

Deloitte provides audit & assurance, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax and related services to public and private clients spanning multiple industries. Deloitte serves four out of five Fortune Global 500^® companies through a globally connected network of member firms in more than 150 countries and territories bringing world-class capabilities, insights and service to address clients’ most complex business challenges. To learn more about how Deloitte’s approximately 264,000 professionals—9,400 of whom are based in Canada—make an impact that matters, please connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

Deloitte LLP, an Ontario limited liability partnership, is the Canadian member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee, and its network of member firms, each of which is a legally separate and independent entity. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited and its member firms.

About SAS

SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative software and services, SAS empowers and inspires customers around the world to transform data into intelligence. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW^®.

The Canadian subsidiary of SAS has been in operation since 1988. Headquartered in Toronto, SAS employs more than 300 people across the country at its Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City and Montréal offices. For more information, please visit sas.com/canada.