Why Export Development Canada (EDC) is using the Fact Framework to build a custom risk rating engine

Export Development Canada (EDC) is Canada's export credit agency, providing trade financing, export credit insurance, bonding services and foreign market expertise to Canadian exporters. 

In 2010 EDC joined forces with Bureau van Dijk, adopting the Fact Framework to help them customise an environment for the credit risk rating branch of their business.

How they got on

Seven years on, we sat down with Carol Smith, EDC's senior program manager and risk rating COE, to discuss why they chose Fact and to discover what changes they've seen since partnering with Bureau van Dijk seven years ago.

EDC decided to work with Bureau van Dijk when they were in the process of updating their credit risk rating tools and risk rating methodology. They were looking for technology to help complete this process effectively. Carol explains their requirements, saying: "We were looking for a platform that would be basically vendor agnostic, that would give us the flexibility to build the risk rating engine that we needed for our business."

EDC opted to work with Fact as they wanted "something that was customisable, not off-the-shelf, not custom-built", and that is what The Fact Framework offered. 

Easy to integrate, vendor-agnostic and flexible

Because Fact is easy to integrate, vendor-agnostic and flexible, EDC have been able to centralise a number of functions and gain greater control over their risk rating tools. Carol continues: "We now have one risk rating environment, with the majority of our tools centralised. We are getting less negative feedback from the audit function and, basically, it's a customised solution that is addressing our needs as we've designed it."

EDC are continuing to expand the ways in which they use Fact and work with Bureau van Dijk, as a result of their experience to date. Carol concludes: "It's always been a very collaborative relationship, and the team's made a real effort to understand our business needs and it's all about customisation and "FACT is your environment, what should it look like?" And we've developed it in partnership with the teams and it's been a very rewarding experience."

You can watch the full interview here.

The Fact Framework is a sophisticated solution that offers a customised approach to credit risk management. Used by banks, financial institutions and corporates around the world, Fact can be completely integrated into your existing workflow to create a single point of entry to your entire credit risk management process.