his article, the third in a four-part series, describes the development of an analytics platform by SunTrust that integrates Basel II requirements for data-based risk assessment into a Windows-like interface allowing sophisticated statistical models to be developed, validated, and documented quickly and efficiently.

Although the previous two articles in this series provided some basic guidelines to analytics, the truth is that modeling is as much of an art as a science. Painting the most lifelike picture of risk can involve a variety of statistical tools. Each tool has its strong points and carries with it a unique programming language. Therefore, one of the biggest systems challenges is combining these tools to maximize efficiency, minimize errors, and basically make things as simple as possible.

SunTrust decided to build a standardized platform specifically geared to analytics. Regardless of the statistical tools necessary for performing specific tasks, the user would go to just one place--a customized graphical user interface (GUI). Some general benefits of the system are that it:

The development of SunTrust's modeling platform was done in two stages. The first stage consisted of writing customized code in each statistical programming language to capitalize on their strengths and create tailored routines for handling specialized tasks. These statistical packages included SAS, S-PLUS, SHAZAM, and a GIS (Geographic Information System) tool called ARCVIEW, which gives the modeling platform the capability of mapping spatial aspects of the data.

The second stage involved the creation of a GUI to consolidate the various statistical tools under a single umbrella of buttons and windows. Since the number of users was expected to be relatively small and localized, a Web solution was not necessary. Therefdore, Visual Basic 6.0 was selected as the application development language because it's easy to use and most users are familiar with it. SunTrust wanted a design that would offer maximum flexibility in the art of model building yet would be structured to provide consistency of methodology. Features were included that would allow the system to