eFrame® Workflow, Governance and Process Control for Efficient and Accurate Analytics and Reporting eFrame® automates the collection and validation of data from across the organisation for regulatory and management reporting and improved insight into risk. It works with a firm’s existing systems to create a repeatable process that lightens the administrative burden, ensures excellent governance, and produces accurate, auditable reports that senior management and regulatory supervisors can trust.

The challenge: escalating reporting demands

Organisations of all sizes struggle to meet the reporting demands of markets,

regulators and senior management. Report production often involves much manual intervention, with the collection and collation of vast amounts of data from across the business creating a real risk of errors, omissions and delays.

It’s an expensive and time-consuming exercise that detracts from day-to-day operations, and its manual nature means the process has to be started again from scratch when the next report is due.

Trustworthy reports for confident decision-making

eFrame® is a software application that works with a firm’s existing systems to automate and accelerate the reporting process for:

• Regulatory reports such as those required under Solvency II and Basel III

• Internal management reporting for risk-related decision-making

Trustworthy, auditable and repeatable reporting

eFrame® brings major benefits to entity-level and consolidated group-level reporting processes:

• Auditability – eFrame® records every action taken to create a report, every calculation made in the production of the figures, and every source system supplying the underlying data

• Process Control – eFrame® institutes a workflow for report creation, automatically alerting individuals to the need to supply sign off data, ensuring that all data is approved and validated

• Traceability – all data collected by – eFrame® is traceable to its original source, ensuring management or supervisory queries about reported figures can be managed efficiently

• Repeatability – once a reporting process is defined in eFrame®, it can be run and re-run at any time; making it ideal for quarter-end and year-end reports to markets and regulators, as well as more frequent internal reporting and ad-hoc stress testing

• Trustworthiness – reports are prepared according to a definitive process established within eFrame®, so senior management can have complete confidence in their integrity

• Timeliness – with regulators requiring reports to be submitted within a few weeks of quarter and year-end, eFrame®’s automated process enables tight timeframes to be met with ease with its Time-Window Driven Reporting™ approach. eFrame® orchestrates all the data, systems, processes and people involved in a reporting cycle to ensure reports are delivered within deadlines, everytime

• History – eFrame® preserves a record of data used in previous reports, enabling reports to be compared to previous periods, and allowing historical data to be re-used when appropriate

Automates a firm’s chosen reporting processes

eFrame® is a web-based application that runs on a firm’s own servers, within

its firewall. During the set-up phase, eFrame® is configured to reflect an organisation’s chosen reporting process, whether that’s an internally-defined model or an industry standard model, like the Standard Formula for Solvency II reporting. The resulting configuration will include details of all aspects of a firm’s reporting process, including:

• A standard taxonomy specifying the data types being gathered for the report

• Data sources for all figures and economic calculations required

• The individuals, roles and responsibilities involved in supplying and approving the data

• Workflow, escalation and exception management processes to prevent bottlenecks

• Timescales in which the report(s) need to be produced

• Disclosure requirements for the reports being prepared, including output format

Multiple reporting capabilities

eFrame® is packed with powerful and flexible reporting capabilities, including:

• Standard reports: eFrame® comes with a suite of standard, out-of-the-box reports, based on common internal and external requirements

• Custom reports: SecondFloor can implement additional custom reports at a firm’s request

eFrame®

Describe

Using our Analyzer tool to graphically show the current situation and the solution.

Deploy

Use the combination of the documentation of the analyzer and the implementation of eFrame® to reach a confident deployment.

Configure

Setup eFrame® according to the solution proposed where the solution will be imported out of the Analyzer.

Define

What is the issue, where are the root causes of this. Workshop approach to clarify the issue.

Test

Use the configured eFrame® to put the solution in to the test in practice.

Get started fast with eFrame® Accelerators

Firms can get started fast with eFrame® by taking advantage of one

or more eFrame® Accelerator to kick-start the implementation process. eFrame® Accelerators are pre-built software components that encapsulate best practice functionality in certain key areas. Accelerators include:

• Analyzer – a discovery and visualisation tool that locates and maps the systems, individuals, calculations and data sources required for the reporting process

• Solvency II – a ready-made environment for Risk QRT reporting and the QIS model

• Scenario Handler – a place to configure and store scenarios for stress testing and reporting

• Market Data Viewer/Manager – automatically process market data, such as equities, interest rates and FX rates, for valuation dates

• Correlation Viewer/Manager – an easy-to-configure approach to maintaining correlation matrices

• Report Designer – define and design reports based on the reporting data in eFrame®

• Grid Computing – configure eFrame® for a scalable grid computing deployment

• Internal Model Accelerator – a complete set of tools to implement the processing of an internal model for Solvency II reporting and internal risk management

Works with a firm’s existing systems

eFrame® does not replace any existing systems, but orchestrates them to extract the data and calculations needed to produce regulatory reports. It has pre-built eFrame® Connectors that allow it to extract data, in a checkable and auditable way, from existing data warehouses, modelling tools, analytic systems, desktop applications, and business intelligence reporting solutions. It also imports data directly from Microsoft Excel. eFrame® Connectors include:

• IBM® Algo Financial Modeler – imports approved calculations from AFM and creates an audit trail for them

• Data Connector – imports data from relational databases without the need for an enterprise ETL tool

• IBM® Data Stage Connector – automatically extracts data from multiple sources using IBM® Data Stage

• IBM® Cognos® Connector – uses the Cognos® Report Designer interface to run Cognos® reports in eFrame®

Why eFrame®?

eFrame® is a powerful, scalable and practical way to automate and standardise external and internal reporting processes:

> Works with existing IT systems – not as a replacement for any software a firm currently uses – no ‘rip and replace’ project risks

> Multiple uses – eFrame® can be used in many different ways, from automating and auditing specific regulatory reports to organisation-wide risk analysis and decision support

> Proven technology – eFrame® is used by complex financial institutions, including some of the largest in Europe, as an integral part of governance, compliance and risk management

> Fixed price, fixed-term, and fixed-content implementation – a firm will know upfront how much the implementation will cost, how long it will take and what will be implemented

Key benefits• Manage complex reporting demands

• Meet challenging reporting deadlines

• Produce reports senior managers can trust

• Reduce the cost and effort of compliance

• Leverage existing systems

Key features• Automated data collection, validation,

calculation and aggregation

• Smooth workflow and approval processes

• Taxonomy-driven data modelling

• Supports supervisory use tests and own risk self-assessment (ORSA)

Find out more

To learn more about how eFrame® can help standardise, automate and accelerate reporting processes,

contact us on +31 (0)20 6589 700, email us at info@secondfloor.com, or visit our website at www.secondfloor.com.