MetricStream Customer Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago Wins Prestigious OCEG 2012 GRC Achievement Award

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- MetricStream, the market leader in enterprise-wide Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solutions, announced today that its customer, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago (FHLBC), has won the Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG) 2012 GRC Achievement Award that was presented on June 5, 2012 during the Compliance Week Conference in Washington, D.C. 

Says Tom Harper, EVP and General Auditor at FHLBC, "We are delighted to have won this prestigious award which acknowledges our commitment and efforts towards building a more integrated, collaborative, and transparent risk environment, ably supported by the MetricStream GRC Platform."

Since their establishment in 2010, the OCEG awards have recognized the great strides that organizations have made in improving and integrating their approaches in GRC to achieve Principled Performance in specific financial and operational terms. To be nominated for the award, organizations needed to demonstrate how their project took an integrated, rather than a siloed, approach across business areas and GRC, and how as a result, the organization was able to achieve Principled Performance. The organizations also needed to demonstrate successful implementation of a significant portion of the OCEG Red Book GRC Capability Model.

"From the start, FHLBC was a strong contender for the GRC Achievement awards," says Carole Stern Switzer, OCEG President. "The bank undertook a vast and challenging project to move from a siloed compliance focus, to a coordinated and efficient framework for enterprise-wide risk and compliance management. Each part of the project was well thought out and executed - right from defining objectives, to envisioning the integrated framework, to establishing collaborative relationships between all stakeholders, to developing strong executive support. We believe that FHLBC's efforts will help the bank grow from strength to strength, and serve as a model to other organizations embarking on their GRC journey."

FHLBC is a $68.9 billion government sponsored wholesale bank that serves the needs of member financial institutions in Illinois and Wisconsin. By providing liquidity, funding, and asset-liability management capabilities to member institutions on a secured basis, and by assisting members in providing affordable housing and economic development in their communities, the FHLB Chicago is a valuable partner for low-cost, short- and long-term funding.

The 2012 GRC Achievement Awards recognized FHLBC for its integrated risk and control re-engineering project which focused on implementing a single, centralized risk management strategy with common controls, improved risk transparency and accountability, and integrated reporting and control infrastructure. The project also enabled the implementation of common risk definitions, consistent risk evaluations, and independent but comparable risk reporting.

FHLBC's overall goals for the project were to: