Nationwide aims for compliance assurance with ClusterSeven

Nationwide improves spreadsheet management

The Nationwide Building Society has moved to try to ensure compliance with Basel II, Sarbanes-Oxley and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, by deploying ClusterSeven's Enterprise Spreadsheet Management (ESM) system.

Nationwide's head of IT development, Pete Coleman, said that, "adopting ClusterSeven gives us central visibility of activity in our business-critical spreadsheets and helps protect against operational loss.”

Nationwide said it rolled ClusterSeven's ESM product specifically for its spreadsheet management and control and risk management capabilities, on the advice of consulting partner InfoSys Technologies.

ClusterSeven's ESM system tracks all spreadsheet changes, user-stamping each event, and allowing firms to apply standard data management policies.

The European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group (EuSpRIG) points out on its website that, "research has repeatedly shown that an alarming proportion of corporate spreadsheet models are not tested to the extent necessary to support Directors' fiduciary, reporting and compliance obligations."

EuSpRIG adds that the business risks for uncontrolled and untested spreadsheet models include lost revenue and profits, mispricing and poor decision-making due to prevalent but undetected errors, and fraud due to malicious tampering.

Earlier in February, Nationwide completed the migration of its cheque-processing operation, outsourcing it to IT services firm Unisys.