Discover what ION can do for you
What is a risk management solution?
Organizations face many risks and market disruptions. Corporate treasury is no exception. Identifying and quantifying these risks in today’s volatile markets is crucial for effective decision-making. However, many organizations aren’t aware of the risks and how they can manage them on an enterprise level. Risk management tools help teams manage their exposures, execute best-practice hedging strategies, and mitigate financial and operational risks for their organization.
Why an ION Treasury risk management solution?
Exposure management
Manage all financial risks in a single solution and capture liquidity, credit, and market risks across global subsidiaries as they arise. Identify and quantify exposure across all major asset classes, including foreign exchange, interest rates, and commodities.
Derivative valuation
Automate derivative, asset, and liability valuation processes to determine accurate market values, CVA, and DVA. Benefit from integrated market data and send valuation results downstream to keep your derivative accounting in sync.
Risk analytics
Drive strategic decisions with advanced risk analytics and reporting. Optimize hedging strategies with scenario analysis, stress testing, and risk metrics like VaR and CFaR. Control operational risks by introducing counterparty limits, trader limits, and multi-eye approval.
Audit controls and reporting
Take the fear out of audits and the complex local, international, and cross-border regulations requirements. Automate and centralize documentation and reporting, track exposures throughout their lifecycle, and report on actual vs expected performance.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between VaR and CFaR?
Most finance professionals are familiar with the concept of Value at Risk (VaR), since it is widely used by financial institutions to estimate the potential loss of market values on a portfolio. The Cash Flow at Risk (CFaR) approach is a close cousin of VaR, measuring potential shortfalls of cash flow impacting the P&L statement and, consequently, earnings per share. Both can be used to estimate worst case risk scenarios, but CFaR provides a more precise and tailored way to measure risk for corporates. Here’s why:
1. Corporates care about risk over a longer time horizon. While financial institutions have the ability to quickly trade in and out of the market in response to short term changes in balance sheet fair values, corporates are locked into prices until their annual budget processes or contract renewals. Only then do they have an opportunity to lock in new prices. CFaR is a more suitable approach to modeling risk because it measures the potential cash flow shortfalls over a much longer time horizon than VaR, and it incorporates longer term changes in market prices.
2. Not all risks are the same. The Hong Kong dollar pegged to the U.S. dollar is less risky than, say, the price of oil. A good CFaR model enables corporates to leverage correlations between asset classes and their differing volatilities to formulate actionable hedging strategies that can translate into significant savings. Rather than overstating their risk by simply hedging all their exposures, companies can look at correlations between various asset classes, test their hedging assumptions, and tweak their hedging decisions, By analyzing exposures in this manner, companies can avoid over hedging and reduce as much as 40-60% of their transaction costs.
Risk measures such as VaR and CFaR are valuable in understanding exposures and developing solid risk management programs. But CFaR is more applicable for corporates as it more closely aligns with how they need to analyze their exposures from a P&L perspective and manage their risk over time.
What do decision makers expect from their risk managers and how can a TMS support this?
Financial risk management is a strategic focus for organizations around the world. It requires deep expertise and supporting technology. Risk managers need to be able to answer the following questions:
- To what risks am I exposed, and should I hedge against them?
- What are the best hedge instruments for my needs?
- How did my hedging strategy perform?
- With whom should I transact?
- Do I have independent data?
ION’s Treasury management systems include sophisticated risk management and hedge accounting capabilities to help answer these questions.
How can use of a TMS support my FX risk management policy?
ION customers can achieve complete company-wide consolidation of their FX exposure positions. Our TMS systems can support the capture of rolling FX hedge policies, including the recommendation of FX trades to stay in compliance with said policy. The enhanced visibility provided to our clients ensures that they can make informed decisions on their FX position.
Learn more about how our TMS systems can help automate your FX risk management processes.
Are ION solutions equipped for a post-IBOR world?
ION has a centrally managed technical task force that acts as a focus group and point of contact for all hedge accounting and risk-related matters, including the implications of IBOR reform on the market and our solutions. This has enabled us to react quickly to the IBOR transition and ensure that we have the functionality required to support ARRs, related valuations, and accounting, together with dedicated training and other services to assist our customers with the transition.
With Reval as our single, integrated TMS, we elevated overall on-demand visibility, boosted the quality of our data, and established a more robust and one-stop solution for risk management, compliance, hedge accounting, evaluation, treasury reporting and fund flow optimization.
CLPDürr Group controls liquidity and risks enterprise-wide with the rolling liquidity plans and project-based analysis from ITS.
Corporate Finance and Treasury, Dürr Aktiengesellschaft