Risk Management for End User Computing in Banking

Many financial institutions ignore or accept the risks inherent in using spreadsheets in critical business processes—but it doesn't have to be that way. There are over a billion users of Excel in the world. Excel is both ubiquitous and heavily used because it offers non-IT persons a powerful tool for performing complex tasks such as financial reporting and analysis, credit evaluation, and operational workflow.

Significant risks remain in using Excel in financial services, though. Whether they are called EUCs (end user computing), UDAs (user developed applications) or something else, the main issues are that the spreadsheet is fundamentally a user tool rather than a platform. There are significant gaps in the check-in/check-out approach that present meaningful risk to the institution:

Lack of auditability: a potential regulatory issue because even with controls, the ability to show who changed what at which time is lacking in Excel.

Data isolation: spreadsheet data is located on islands (shared drives and desktops), meaning data controls fall short of what is possible even in a simple database. Extracting data for centralization and other uses (such as AI LLMs) creates risk related to ETL activities.

The Boardwalk Velocity Solution

Boardwalk Velocity is the first product designed to address Excel EUC risk in a way that satisfies IT, regulators, and users simultaneously. Velocity's cutting-edge technology eliminates Excel EUC risk at scale while preserving the Excel user experience, at a remarkable 15x less time and cost advantage compared to many re-platforming alternatives.

Velocity is in use by a Fortune 500 bank (one of the top three in the United States and top 15 globally by asset size). They are remediating a sizable EUC risk at scale and deriving significant benefits:

Complete data visibility and control: auditable and trackable down to the cell level with fine-grained access control; data is now available in a true database for inclusion in the overall corporate data asset universe.

Low user impact: while data and functions have moved to a server database, users continue to use Excel's familiar interface so disruption to workflow is minimized or even eliminated.

Speed to remediation: migration tools reduce Excel data and logic rapidly to the Velocity platform, reducing time and cost to address risk.