BLME (Bank of London and The Middle East) has become the latest bank to award a contract to data management and spreadsheet specialist ClusterSeven. BLME has selected ClusterSeven’s Enterprise Spreadsheet Management® (ESM) software to provide control for its key business spreadsheets and the data they manipulate. BLME is an independent UK, wholesale Sharia’a compliant bank based in London. It is the largest Sharia’a compliant bank in Europe. The core divisions that make up BLME’s offering are Corporate Banking, Treasury and Wealth Management comprising of Private Banking and Asset Management.

ClusterSeven’s end-user computing management solutions enable financial services firms and other leading institutions to maintain the transparency and integrity of their spreadsheets and data files in order to increase productivity and business insight and to reduce operational risk.

BLME COO Paul Gospage said: “The understanding and control of spreadsheet activity we get with ClusterSeven allows us to improve our operational controls and governance. These include better data quality, lower manual costs, and better insight to inform our IT development plans.”

Ralph Baxter, CEO of ClusterSeven, said: “We are delighted that BLME has selected us to enhance its business and data operations. Many high value and specialist business activities are dependent on spreadsheets to complement core systems. Increasing emphasis on risk management and data quality has exposed spreadsheet management as a major opportunity to reduce operational risk and deliver efficiencies.”