Features
Extended Benefits
Bank Hapoalim expands data warehouse environment to meet changing needs.
by Mike Westholder
When Bank Hapoalim, one of Israel’s leading financial institutions, sought to enhance financial reporting and streamline regulatory compliance, the logical choice was to expand its Teradata environment to better integrate and centralize its rising data volume.
“Bank Hapoalim will benefit from a unified financial infrastructure,” says Haya Leaman, the bank’s manager of MIS information systems and the data warehouse infrastructure. “We will have a single view of our customers across the organization based on one data store—and for the first time we’ll be ‘singing from one prayer book.’ We needed this solution to achieve uniformity in financial and management reporting as well as for meeting regulatory requirements.”
Evolution of the solution
First implemented in 1997, Bank Hapoalim’s data warehouse initially focused on optimizing customer data for improved marketing. Once the Teradata tools were delivering high return on investment (ROI) on marketing, the bank began building an enterprise data foundation for regulatory reporting and sophisticated financial analysis.
In 2004, the company began migrating all financial source system data into the data warehouse to provide operational system users with access to financial data.
The latest expansion was the result of a review that started in 2005, when regulatory changes required enhanced data warehouse capabilities and tools. The new financial infrastructure is the platform for Basel II and other regulatory reporting.
Announced in 2008, this project included the installation of software tools and new hardware for analyzing and reporting financial results. Among the new software and services solutions that the bank implemented was Teradata Value Analyzer, which provides detailed, enterprise profitability analysis to enhance finance and performance measurement capabilities.
Through the years, Bank Hapoalim’s data volume continues to grow with its success, and the recent upgrade will extend the multiple-terabyte expansion of its data warehouse over the previous three years.
Quicker compliance
The Teradata platform greatly enhances the accuracy and speed of compliance reporting. “We are aiming to be completely compliant [with regulations],” Leaman says. “Our data warehouse serves as the source for the development of our risk models. This will contribute to and optimize our capital adequacy levels, which in turn will improve the bank’s return on equity.”
In addition, the latest implementation advances the bank’s analytics capabilities. “We have used our data warehouse to support deeper data analysis—and more effective marketing,” Leaman says. “The Teradata analytical solution environment will continue to augment our efforts to better understand business costs and profitability drivers, and improve decision making.”
As Bank Hapoalim grows, its data warehouse solution evolves with it. From marketing to financial analysis to regulatory compliance, the Teradata system continues to expand to meet the company’s needs.
Mike Westholder is managing editor of Teradata Magazine.