Accenture Launches North American Innovation Center for Finance & Risk

Accenture (News - Alert) (NYSE:ACN) has opened the Innovation Center for Finance & Risk in New York to help financial services clients quickly develop and scale advanced data and analytics capabilities.

The center, part of Accenture's international innovation network, focuses on developing solutions for finance and risk (F&R) data management, data engineering, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and reporting. The center, which will offer consulting, development and operations services across the end-to-end data and analytics solution lifecycle, already has more than 20 industry partnerships with universities, fintech startups and global financial institutions.

Last month, Accenture announced that it is accelerating its investments in innovation in the U.S., including opening 10 new innovation hubs and expanding its regional network of technology delivery centers by the end of 2020. The company also will invest $1.4 billion in training to ensure its people have leading-edge capabilities to serve its clients, while creating 15,000 highly skilled new jobs in the U.S.

The Innovation Center for Finance & Risk in New York will focus on helping financial institutions achieve cost-efficient growth and enhance regulatory controls as they implement a new generation of data and analytics capabilities, powered by big data, cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, to address regulatory reporting (including CCAR, CECL and FRTB), financial and risk reporting. The new center will help institutions accelerate that transition by using next-generation tools and technology enabled by the Accenture Insights Platform (AIP), the Accenture Labs - which redefine the possible with applied R&D - and by leveraging Accenture's software alliances.

Accenture is helping several of the world's largest retail, commercial and investment banks with initiatives to enhance their data-science, analytics-technology and data-engineering capabilities and embed analytics across their businesses. Using cutting-edge technology and flexible delivery methods, Accenture has helped these clients reduce the time to deploy these solutions by as much as 80 percent while reducing implementation costs by 75 percent.

"Our new Innovation Center for Finance & Risk fosters deep collaboration between our clients and Accenture data scientists and technology experts, who understand their challenges," said Antonio Castro, the innovation center's lead for Accenture Analytics, part of Accenture Digital. "Together, we can work quickly and effectively to ideate, prototype and scale solutions. The center has already enabled us to accelerate delivery of next-generation data platforms, including buildig the data pipelines, models and dashboards for risk, marketing and performance reporting for a number of leading financial institutions."

Luther Klein, the center's lead for Finance & Risk Services, said, "This is all about accelerating innovation for institutions that operate in the North American market. With the center, we are providing a combination of data analysis, quantitative modelling and functional resources that we can scale to support our clients' needs. By using tools such as Python and Spark, banks are able to leverage the center to enhance their finance and risk capabilities and generate deeper analytics insight around big data. These approaches are creating value for their businesses by streamlining operations and fast-tracking the delivery of data management and traceability initiatives."

The center is part of the Accenture Innovation Architecture, which combines capabilities from across the company to help clients develop and deliver disruptive innovations, and to scale them faster. From research, ventures and labs to studios, innovation centers and delivery centers, it helps companies imagine the future and bring it to life.

More information about Accenture's Innovation Center for Finance & Risk is available here.

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions - underpinned by the world's largest delivery network - Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With more than 394,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com.

Accenture Analytics, part of Accenture Digital, helps clients to use analytics and artificial intelligence to drive actionable insights, at scale. Accenture Analytics applies sophisticated algorithms, data engineering and visualization to extract business insights and help clients turn those insights into actions that drive tangible outcomes - to improve their performance and disrupt their markets. With deep industry and technical experience, Accenture Analytics provides services and solutions that include, but are not limited to: analytics-as-a-service through the Accenture Insights Platform, continuous intelligent security, machine learning, and IoT Analytics. For more information, follow us @ISpeakAnalytics and visit www.accenture.com/analytics.

Accenture Finance & Risk Services is a business service within Accenture's Financial Services operating group that provides management consulting and technology services to banks, insurers and capital markets organizations. Its services are designed to help financial services companies leverage the critical functions of risk and finance as competitive differentiators in executing their business strategy. It provides updates on the latest news and analysis of regulations across major global economies through the Accenture Regulatory Insights blog.