SAS has acquired Honolulu-based Kamakura, which provides specialised software, data and consulting that helps financial organisations across the spectrum – banks, insurance companies, asset managers, pension funds and more – manage a variety of financial risks.
SAS’ investment decision comes as post-pandemic optimism is shadowed by war, unyielding supply chain disruption, and the end of many pandemic-era financial and social safety-net programs. Rising inflation and recession rumblings have emerged as dark clouds on the global economic horizon, signalling potential turbulence ahead – a time for financial services organisations large and small to closely examine the liquidity risk and other risks in their portfolios.
“This acquisition is an extension of tremendous investments already made in SAS’ cloud-ready risk management platform and integrated solutions,” says SAS co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight. “It signals our intent to advance market-changing risk solutions to solve the most pressing challenges our financial services customers face. We foresee that the resulting strength of SAS technology, paired with Kamakura’s risk analytics and credit models, will prove far greater than the sum of its parts.”
In acquiring Kamakura, SAS aims to deliver an unparalleled suite of integrated risk solutions, particularly around asset liability management (ALM), and serve additional facets of the financial services industry.
Kamakura specialises in software and risk management data for the banking and insurance sectors, currently delivered through two offerings:
- Kamakura Risk Manager (KRM). KRM is among the most advanced, fully integrated risk management systems for ALM on the market. The software offers transaction-level valuation, simulation, stress testing and cashflow analysis.
- Kamakura Risk Information Services (KRIS). This cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) offering is a subscription data service that provides credit risk data and analytics that help companies and countries forecast credit spreads and calculate default probabilities based on proprietary models.
The acquisition will bring these solutions’ capabilities into the SAS fold, along with Kamakura’s executives, leadership team, employees and contractors – a noteworthy accumulation of specialised quantitative risk expertise that would take years to assemble in today’s market.