RISK-MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

Oliver, Wyman & Company will merge with Mercer Inc.'s financial-services strategy and risk-consulting units to form Mercer Oliver Wyman. The newly formed company will offer strategy, actuarial and risk management consulting expertise to the financial-services industry. John Drzik, chairman of Oliver, Wyman & Company will serve as president of the new entity, which will have more than 600 employees in offices in North America, Europe and Asia.

Sector Inc., a subsidiary of the Securities Industry Automation Corporation, has launched an e-mail archiving solution. The E-mail Compliance Solution product will enable broker/dealers to comply with SEC Rule 17a-4 for storage and management of e-mail. The solution collects, indexes and archives the e-mail to a compliant facility operated within the SIAC data centers. The e-mail will be processed and written to both magnetic disk for immediate retrieval and to optical storage for non-rewriteable requirements. Access to the archive and its indices is available to authorized users through a browser-based application.

Fitch Risk has acquired the IC2 First financial institutions risk scenario trends database from Zurich Financial Services Group. The IC2 First database will become part of the OpVantage division of Fitch. OpVantage will offer the database service and will also combine it with its OpVar Software Suite of products. IC2 First is a Web-based operational-risk loss event database and information service with case studies discussing event triggers and consequences. Penny Cagan, who has managed the IC2 First loss database for several years, will become senior member of the OpVantage team, responsible for all operational-risk-data offerings.