Risk Technology Awards 2020 — Aire named ‘most innovative vendor’

We’ve delved into this year’s Risk.net award winners.

Earlier this month, Aire was named Risk.net’s ‘Most Innovative Vendor’ in the publication’s prestigious Risk Technology Awards.

With Moody’s Analytics scooping an impressive five awards in this year’s list, other winners included FICO, who took home ‘financial crime product of the year’, SAS, who were recognised for their approach to ‘consumer credit modelling software’ and RiskSense who achieved ‘cyber risk product of the year.’

Delighted to be showcased amongst a number of impressive businesses, we thought we’d provide a brief review of our fellow award winners for you — many of which are doing amazing things to advance their businesses, and the development of the risk industry more broadly, through innovation.

The judging process and panel

Alongside 141 other businesses, we submitted our entry back in January, with no idea of the seismic changes to come across the world in the months to follow. Entrants were encouraged to submit their credentials across 23 different categories, with 12 judges taking part in the deliberation process. All experts across the enterprise, credit and operational risk industry, the panel included Risk.net’s contributing editor, Clive Davidson, and the publication’s global editorial director, Duncan Wood.

Our fellow winners

Like many of the virtual awards and industry events currently being re-imagined, Risk.net has chosen to focus their coverage on how winners are responding to COVID-19, showcasing the innovation that continues to take place within the risk industry despite the new global backdrop.

For a business like Moody’s Analytics, a global provider of financial intelligence, the sudden shocks experienced in March this year were significant, requiring fast thinking to help their customers. They did this by producing a number of ad hoc scenarios to capture the most pertinent emerging risks for their clients, complementing their existing forecasts to deliver immediate business value. No stranger to awards recognition by Risk.net, Moody’s scooped six awards in 2019, and three in 2018.

A newer entrant to the Risk Technology Awards is Yields.io — established in 2017, the firm offers technology solutions that leverage AI for automated model risk management on an enterprise-wide scale. Picking up this year’s gong for ‘Model validation service of the year’, judges commented that the business offers a lighter and less expensive full lifecycle risk management platform, making them worthy winners of the award in their ability to make technology of this kind more widely available for customers.

Having launched their brand new, software-as-a-service regulatory reporting solution over the last twelve months, Wolters Kluwer were recognised for their ‘impressive, consistent and convincing solution’ by judges. Offering a suite of integrated regulatory compliance services that feature a single source of data to ensure consistency, Wolters Kluwer won this year’s ‘Regulatory reporting system of the year’ award.

And finally…

Amidst this list of highly deserving businesses you’ll find Aire — first-time winner in the ‘Most Innovative Vendor’ category.

Interviewed ahead of the awards announcement, Aire’s Founder and CEO, Aneesh Varma, added his take on how COVID-19 has impacted our business model:

‘With Covid‑19, we have to spend time manually validating the thinking of the machine. You have to step up the human effort — applying logic and reason. If the machine is pointing to a factor that shows positive correlation with financial distress, you have to ask, why?’

Last year won by IBM, Aire was selected for a ‘non-traditional approach to credit risk, both to the consumers it attempts to score and the methodology it applies when doing so’.

The full list of results is outlined below:

• FIS — Risk dashboard software of the year
• SS&C Algorithmics — Bank ALM system of the year
• RiskFirst — Life and pensions ALM system of the year
• Wolters Kluwer — Regulatory reporting system of the year
• Quantifi — Best vendor for systems support & implementation
• Yields.io — Model validation service of the year
• RiskSense — Cyber risk/security product of the year
• Fico — Financial crime product of the year
• NICE Actimize — Market surveillance product of the year
• SAI Global — GRC product of the year
• Exactpro Systems — Managed support services provider of the year
• FIS — Regulatory capital calculation product
• Moody’s Analytics — Credit data provider of the year
• Moody’s Analytics — Credit stress-testing product of the year
• SAS — Consumer credit modelling software of the year
• Moody’s Analytics — Wholesale credit modelling software of the year
• Moody’s Analytics — IFRS 9 — Enterprise solution of the year
• Moody’s Analytics — IFRS9 — Enterprise-wide stress-testing product of the year
• Aire — Most innovative vendor

Congratulations to all this year’s winners and thanks to Risk.net, and their prestigious awards panel, for highlighting Aire amongst their list of winners.

— Alex, on behalf of Aire

Powered by first-party data, Aire provides actionable credit insight to lenders today, better enabling consumers to build their tomorrow.