{"id":50048,"date":"2022-07-06T10:46:08","date_gmt":"2022-07-06T02:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=50048"},"modified":"2022-07-06T10:46:11","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T02:46:11","slug":"sas-acquires-kamakura","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2022\/07\/06\/sas-acquires-kamakura\/","title":{"rendered":"SAS acquires Kamakura"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Global AI and analytics leader SAS has acquired Honolulu-based\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kamakuraco.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kamakura Corporation<\/a>. Privately held Kamakura provides specialized software, data and consulting that helps financial organizations across the spectrum \u2013 banks, insurance companies, asset managers, pension funds and more \u2013 manage a variety of financial risks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">SAS\u2019 investment decision comes as post-pandemic optimism is shadowed by war, unyielding supply chain disruption, and the end of many pandemic-era financial and social safety-net programs. Rising inflation and recession rumblings have emerged as dark clouds on the global economic horizon, signaling potential turbulence ahead \u2013 a time for financial services organizations large and small to closely examine the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sas.com\/en_us\/insights\/risk-management\/liquidity-risk.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">liquidity risk<\/a>&nbsp;and other risks in their portfolios.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis acquisition is an extension of tremendous investments already made in SAS\u2019 cloud-ready&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sas.com\/en_us\/solutions\/risk-management.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">risk management<\/a>&nbsp;platform and integrated solutions,\u201d said SAS co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight. \u201cIt signals our intent to advance market-changing risk solutions to solve the most pressing challenges our financial services customers face. We foresee that the resulting strength of SAS technology, paired with Kamakura\u2019s risk analytics and credit models, will prove far greater than the sum of its parts.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In acquiring Kamakura, SAS aims to deliver an unparalleled suite of integrated&nbsp;risk solutions, particularly around asset liability management (ALM), and serve additional facets of the financial services industry.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe synergistic value in the melding of two highly complementary risk technology portfolios is undeniable to anyone familiar with SAS and Kamakura; it\u2019s like joining matching puzzle pieces,\u201d said Sidhartha Dash, Research Director at Chartis. \u201cMerging Kamakura\u2019s strengths \u2013 robust ALM and interest rate risk capabilities, proprietary and sophisticated credit models, and risk data \u2013 with SAS\u2019 award-winning capabilities in credit risk management and risk and finance integration on SAS<sup>\u00ae<\/sup>&nbsp;Viya<sup>\u00ae<\/sup>&nbsp;is a powerful combination for solutions across the entire balance sheet.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A singular vision&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kamakura is known for its pioneering vision and quantitative rigor. For more than three decades, it has specialized in software and risk management data for the banking and insurance sectors, currently delivered through two offerings:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Kamakura Risk Manager (KRM).<\/strong>&nbsp;KRM is among the most advanced, fully integrated risk management systems for ALM on the market. The software offers transaction-level valuation, simulation, stress testing and cashflow analysis.&nbsp;<\/li><li><strong>Kamakura Risk Information Services (KRIS).<\/strong>&nbsp;This cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) offering is a subscription data service that provides credit risk data and analytics that help companies and countries forecast credit spreads and calculate default probabilities based on proprietary models.&nbsp;<\/li><li><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The acquisition will bring these solutions\u2019 capabilities into the SAS fold, along with Kamakura\u2019s executives, leadership team, employees and contractors \u2013 a noteworthy accumulation of specialized quantitative risk expertise that would take years to assemble in today\u2019s market.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Two sides of the same coin&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kamakura specifically chose SAS over other potential acquisition suitors based on alignment in the companies\u2019 data-driven, research-oriented cultures and their mutual excellence in modeling and analytics, according to Kamakura Chairman and CEO Don van Deventer, who founded the company in 1990.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">SAS and Kamakura share the same philosophy, he said: that&nbsp;successfully managing financial risk, while optimizing returns and meeting&nbsp;regulatory requirements, demands industry-leading research, sound analytics, fully integrated&nbsp;applications, flawless execution, and quantifiable results.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cJoining the SAS family represents an exciting new chapter in Kamakura\u2019s 32-year history,\u201d said van Deventer. \u201cIn combination, our like cultures will produce synergies that fuel customer and marketplace innovation. More concretely, adding SAS\u2019 cloud-native Viya technology, risk domain capabilities and intuitive, user-friendly interfaces to Kamakura\u2019s IP will spawn a top-tier, market-changing ALM offering.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alongside van Deventer, an acclaimed author of four risk books, Kamakura\u2019s executive leadership team includes Research Director Robert Jarrow, renowned in the quantitative risk field for co-creating two prominent risk modeling frameworks:\u00a0the Heath-Jarrow-Morton interest rate model and the Jarrow-Turnbull reduced-form credit risk model. Both van Deventer and Jarrow, along with Kamakura COO Martin Zorn, will join SAS to help facilitate the transition and lead the development of future-forward ALM and integrated balance sheet offerings and other risk solution advances.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe fragmented and siloed ways financial organizations have traditionally done asset liability and balance sheet management are becoming cost-prohibitive and unsustainable,\u201d said Troy Haines, Senior Vice President and Head of Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions at SAS. \u201cAugmenting and combining SAS\u2019 decades-long expertise in risk management and finance solutions with Kamakura\u2019s advanced capabilities in ALM will better support the industry\u2019s computationally heavy regulatory risk burdens and promote data-driven decisioning.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Privately held Kamakura provides specialized software, data and consulting that helps financial organizations across the spectrum \u2013 banks, insurance companies, asset managers, pension funds and more \u2013 manage a variety of financial risks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":49341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1243,1267,96,2727,1656],"class_list":["post-50048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-sas","tag-sas-philippines","tag-technology","tag-technology-adaption","tag-technology-investment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}