Nationwide Building Society Chooses AxiomSL in Advance of COREP and FINREP

The U.K.’s Nationwide Building Society, a savings and mortgage provider, has selected AxiomSL’s regulatory reporting platform in order to meet requirements from the Bank of England (BOE), Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), including the upcoming September 30 implementation for Common Reporting (COREP) and Financial Reporting (FINREP) under the Capital Requirements Directive IV (CRD IV).

The platform currently delivers prudential and liquidity reporting including COREP, Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR) reporting via the XBRL format. The platform will late add on FINREP and risk/stress reporting.

With these new reporting requirements required in the XBRL format, banks have had more of a need for automated solutions, saysTony Sarkis, head of policy and strategy EMEA, AxiomSL.

“XBRL requirements created a number of complexities,” he says. “Auditing of results became an issue as existing processes and controls that our clients used before weren’t up to the task. Instead of using more analytical resources to do manual reconciliation, now clients can [take] advantage of using our solution, where drill-down of results make them instantly traceable and auditable.”

The new reporting requirements also include more complex data.

“Before COREP and FINREP, financial reporting was based on a template, with a Y access and X access. The COREP and FINREP is a multi-dimensional way of submitting data. Think of cubes of data; it groups a number of data points in one submission format and introduces a Z access which gives it depth,” explains Sarkis.

With this multi-dimensional data, regulators will likely get a clearer view of the market, but of course these regulations coincide with a number of other requirements that are straining banks.

“Most of the regulation of the markets out there is aimed to improve stability, reduce manipulation and mitigate factors that contributed to the past crises,” says Sarkis. “The intent of any regulation is quite noble; the amount of change that a lot of them generate are the major concern.”

One of the reasons Nationwide chose AxiomSL’s solution though is that it is flexible and able to add on additional reporting capabilities.

“We’ve successfully integrated EMIR reporting on the COREP and FINREP reporting, which does prove that the flexible platform actually translates into a massive reduction in operating costs,” says Sarkis.

“AxiomSL’s strategic regulatory reporting platform provided a flexible and scalable solution. This integrated platform consolidates workflow processes and controls, reducing our internal cost while enhancing further data integrity and traceability,” says Rob Brown from Nationwide Building Society.

These cost savings can be important for firms facing cost pressures from multiple regulations, as they have the problem of planning for new requirements while dealing with the uncertainty around implementation.

“Market participants are being asked to adhere to a strict timeline, yet the amount of uncertainty is enormous,” says Sarkis. “How do you budget for these things? One of the benefits of our solution is that we’ve got a flexible platform; we can turn the change [in data] around in three-to-six days, rather than a traditional reporting system that would take three-to-six months.

“You don’t really appreciate the savings until you’re in the midst of it,” he adds.