Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- SAS Day Conference, held on 27 March 2019 in Tashkent, showed a high interest of representatives of the financial sector to effective solutions for risk management, credit scoring and antifraud.

Thanks to the policy of liberalizing market relations, which is now being implemented under the leadership of President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev, new opportunities are opening up for the country’s banking sector. To take full advantage of the free market, a well-built risk-based approach is needed - this is the conclusion reached by the participants of the SAS Day conference organized by SAS, a leading player in the business intelligence market, with the support of KPMG, one of the world’s largest auditing companies.

The event took place at the end of March in Tashkent and brought together representatives of almost all banks of Uzbekistan, as well as experts from banks in Russia, Kazakhstan and experienced consultants in the field of analytics and data processing.

In the banking sector of Uzbekistan, great changes are coming, designed to improve the financial sector of the country and transfer it to market rails. At the end of last year, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev criticized the system of state banks - now the state’s share in the authorized capital is 86%. In 2019 - 2021, on the instructions of the President, a plan for the privatization of the banking sector will be implemented. According to the chairman of the Central Bank of the country, Mamariso Nurmuratov, for his success it is necessary first to improve the banks - to improve the financial condition and the quality of loans. SAS Day participants discussed the tools and approaches that can help banks in Uzbekistan - the results of projects implemented by Russia, Kazakhstan and Western countries were presented at the conference.

Thus, Alexander Efimov, head of the SAS Russia / CIS Directorate for Analytical and Industrial Solutions, presented an overview of cases, which clearly showed how analytics helps to earn money. He demonstrated with real examples how the analysis of payment assignments helps to increase the effectiveness of B2B marketing, how client flow forecasting and optimization of the work schedule of branch offices leads to increased operational efficiency, how text analytics and chat bots help customers quickly and easily handle customer requests. Uzbekistan is paying special attention to the problem of the quality of loans, so the case on this topic was of heightened interest - Alexander showed how a more accurate assessment of the value of residential real estate using analytical decisions helps to make informed decisions when issuing loans.

The topic of artificial intelligence in the management of banking risks was revealed in his speech by Nikolay Filipenkov, regional head of the direction of risk modeling and decision-making SAS EMEA. Artificial intelligence technology today is one of the key priorities of SAS: over the next three years, the company will invest US$1 billion in them. In a survey that SAS conducted among 2000 professionals in the field of risk and finance from around the world, 81% of respondents answered that AI is already benefiting their financial institutions.

As a result, 66% of these organizations reduced their operating expenses, 66% improved the quality of products and services, 75% increased productivity, and 77% improved the quality of decision-making. Uzbek banks have the opportunity to learn from the experience of colleagues and immediately use the best international practices.

The report by Maxim Tsukanov, head of SAS Russia / CIS client analytics practice, was devoted to a no less relevant topic - the expert told how to build an effective platform for managing communications with clients, how to approach each client individually, even if there are hundreds of thousands or even millions of clients. Here, target marketing comes to the rescue of banks, when an offer is individually formed for each client, taking into account his interests, preferences, financial situation and many other factors, up to the current location. But it is impossible to generate tens of thousands of offers manually in real time - this requires powerful automated analytical tools. As a result, the bank gets not only the opportunity to build multi-channel marketing campaigns that hit the target, but also saves employees from routine operations, reduces marketing costs, reduces customer outflow, which ultimately leads to additional profit.

In addition, the conference included presentations on credit scoring and decision-making systems, building corporate data management processes for the bank’s digital transformation, cybersecurity strategies, risk management and other topics relevant for Uzbekistan’s banks in the light of upcoming systemic changes.

“In a modern financial organization, it is impossible to build effective work with risks and well-established antifraud processes without automation. Taking into account the positive measures to improve the banking sector, which are now being taken in Uzbekistan, the country’s banks should pay close attention to modern analytical tools that will quickly bring the business in line with the requirements of the time. The success of banks directly depends on the tools of forecasting and risk management in the new conditions, and the SAS Day conference showed that representatives of the financial sector of Uzbekistan are well aware of this and are interested in effective analytical solutions,” said Andrei Sustavov, SAS Kazakhstan Director General, SAS Development Director in the Central Asian region.