Global Credit Data (GCD) has welcomed its newest member, Standard Chartered, bringing its total number of member banks to 55 and expanding its international data coverage.

Standard Chartered – a leading international investment bank and financial services company – is present in over 60 markets and serves clients in a further 85. The addition of the bank’s data will provide valuable depth to GCD’s data pool, further strengthening the organisation’s international and regional coverage and cementing its reputation as the gold standard for credit risk data pooling.

“We are pleased to welcome Standard Chartered to our growing membership base,” says Richard Crecel, Executive Director at GCD. “Increasing the geographical scope of our data is a primary objective of ours and banks such as Standard Chartered represent important buildings block in our international coverage.”

Standard Chartered stands to gain significant benefits from its membership.

“Becoming a GCD member bank will help us enhance our benchmarking and modelling capabilities,” says Dr Julian Phillips, Global Head of Enterprise Risk Analytics at Standard Chartered. “We continuously work to upgrade our internal risk projection models and related analytics, and GCD provides us with valuable support and rich data coverage to help us fulfil our requirements.”

Fully onboarded, Standard Chartered is able to share its own data and leverage that of other member banks, allowing for instant comparisons across a range of model estimates, including probability of default (PD), exposure at default (EAD) and loss given default (LGD).

GCD’s databases operate on a “give-to-get” basis, meaning members must supply high- quality data to receive pooled data and analysis in return. Through the active participation of its member banks, GCD provides an international forum for exploring the intricacies of credit risk management and the sharing of best practice.

“The next step in expanding our databases,” Crecel adds, “will be deepening our coverage on a regional basis – through specialist banks operating on a smaller, regional and asset- specific scale.”

About Global Credit Data

Global Credit Data (GCD) is a non-profit association owned by its 55-member banks from around the world. Its simple mission is to help banks better understand and model their credit risks through data pooling and benchmarking activities.

GCD’s LGD & EAD Platform is the world’s largest database for LGD and EAD modelling totalling over EUR 200 billion in all Basel Asset Classes. In 2009, GCD introduced a PD & Ratings Platform which now covers more than 15 years of data and helps banks to calibrate and benchmark their PD models in use for regulatory & economic capital, stress-testing, impairment calculation and pricing.

In 2011, GCD started a third database: The Benchmarking Platform. The database includes borrower name and cluster level estimates to help banks to instantly compare PD, rating, LGD and EAD model estimates with their peers. The robustness and capacity of GCD’s data collection and management infrastructure places GCD databases as the global standard for credit risk data pooling.