The commercial banking business has changed dramatically over the past 25 years, due in large part to technological change. Advances in telecommunications, information technology, and financial theory and practice have jointly transformed many of the relationship focused intermediaries of yesteryear into dataintensive risk management operations of today. Consistent with this, we now find may commercial banks embedded as part of global financial institutions that engage in a wide variety of financial activities. To be more specific, technological changes relating to telecommunications and data processing have spurred financial innovations that have altered bank products and services and production processes. For example, the ability to use applied statistics cost-effectively (via software and computing power) has markedly altered the process of financial intermediation. Retail loan applications are now routinely evaluated using credit scoring tools, rather than using human judgement. Such an approach makes underwriting much more transparent to third parties and hence facilities secondary markets for retail credits (e.g., mortgages and credit card receivables) via securitisation. Statistically based risk measurement tools are also used to measure and manage other types of credit risks- as well as interest rate risks-on an ongoing basis across entire portfolios. Indeed, tools like value-at-risk are even used to determine the appropriate allocation of risk-based capital for actively managed portfolios.