Wolters Kluwer enters risk management arena
Jinfo Blog

By Penny Crossland

Abstract

Managing risk in business and finance is very much the subject of the moment, and one closely monitored in VIP's publications.

Item

Managing risk in business and finance is very much the subject of the moment, and one closely monitored in VIP's publications. (see Nancy Davis Kho's posting on the latest edition of VIP magazine at http://www.vivavip.com/go/e30679).

The recent financial crisis has resulted in a swathe of new regulations in Europe and the US: Basel III, Solvency II and the Dodd Frank Act amongst others, and has made the need to manage regulatory requirements and understand the meaning of risk more urgent than ever. (Technofile Europe' posting: http://digbig.com/5bcksp)

Wolters Kluwer's recent acquisition of risk management firm FRS Global, based in Belgium, from investment firm The Carlyle Group and private equity firm Kennet Partners (see the press release at http://digbig.com/5bcksq) comes at an opportune time and marks a shift from providing information on potential risk to finding enterprise-wide solutions in risk management.

The acquisition, as reported by the Technofile Europe blog, follows hard on the heels of IBM's purchase of OpenPages, a software provider that helps businesses manage enterprise-wide risk and compliance activities (see press release at http://digbig.com/5bcksr), and indicates that the competitive landscape in the compliance industry has moved towards decision support services.

Brian Longe, CEO of Wolters Kluwer's Financial & Compliance Services stated that the merged companies created "the world's largest compliance and risk management business focused on financial services, with more than 15,000 banking, insurance and securities customers across the globe".

FRS Global has a strong track record amongst financial institutions, with more than 1,000 organizations using its risk management and regulatory risk reporting solutions. This new deal will be of interest to Thomson Reuters, which acquired UK-based Complinet in June this year (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29303 for a report) and to LexisNexis, which launched its Compliance Manager product in May.

As Joanna Ptolomey reported (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e28960), LexisNexis partnered with Qumas to provide compliance management workflow tools. It would seem that the growing compliance challenge faced by the financial services industry is leading to an ever increasing convergence between content and software.

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