Stay ConnectedWelcome to the Risk Intelligence Podcast, where the Global Association of Risk Professionals, also known as GARP, brings together the world’s foremost Risk Practitioners, from around the globe, for in depth insights and discussions on today’s most important risk issues in finance and energy. Here is your chance to listen in.
Hear from Bo Xu, a Principal at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and a member of GARP’s Risk and AI Advisory Committee, about GenAI use cases and challenges, as well as its impact on modeling, governance, regulation and risk careers.
Even though generative AI is in its early days, its already having a big effect in financial risk management. As a powerful, interactive technology that can understand natural language, quickly search through reams of data and provide human-style answer to questions, GenAI is being used today for everything from data processing to risk monitoring and measurement to quantitative risk modeling.
At the same time, financial institutions must decide how to properly govern GenAI, particularly as critics have expressed concerns about data leakage, intellectual property protection and third-party risk. What’s more, there are questions about the impact GenAI could have on risk jobs and about how regulators are going to respond to this innovative technology.
Relevant Links:
Risk Intelligence: Technology Section
Speaker’s Bio
Bo Xu serves as a Principal at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where he is a core member of the global GenAI expert team. His professional journey at BCG began in 2019, following a four-year tenure at KPMG in the risk consulting practice, concentrating on CCAR/DFAST model development and validation work.
In his role at BCG, Xu leads a multi-disciplinary team focused on AI and GenAI programs. His responsibilities encompass strategy development, AI/GenAI implementation, and change management. He also has expertise in credit risk analysis, model risk management, and data governance from his earlier career.
Hear from Terisa Roberts, Global Head of Risk Modeling and Decisioning at SAS and Sarah Murphy, Principal Director of Accenture Data and AI, as we explore real-time customer decision making and what it means for portfolio monitoring.
Thanks to the internet and artificial intelligence, consumers today can make financial decisions through multiple channels, resulting in a new level of competitive pressure for the sector. Financial services firms must make decisions that are not only fast and reliable, but also automated. Real-time customer decisioning plays a pivotal role in achieving these goals throughout the credit value chain, from the point of onboarding (including KYC, credit risk and fraud assessments and marketing) and beyond.
Today’s episode will focus on:
What are the global trends driving change in customer decisioning in financial services?
What problems/challenges are there with conventional approaches? What are the benefits of modernizing your credit decisioning infrastructure?
How are forward-thinking organizations deriving concrete business value from their decisioning modernization projects?
Links from today’s discussion:
SAS and Accenture Risk Model Decisioning
Risk-Based Decisioning in an Age of Uncertainty Part 1
Risk-Based Decisioning in an Age of Uncertainty Part 2
Speakers Bios:
Terisa Roberts Global Head of Risk Modeling and Decisioning, SAS
Terisa Roberts is a risk management professional with 20 years of experience primarily in the financial services sector. She is currently a Director and Global Lead for Risk Modeling and Decisioning at SAS.
Terisa has an extensive background in risk modeling for retail and commercial portfolios including regulatory capital stress testing and IFRS9/CECL. She advises banks, other financial services providers and regulators concerning innovations in Risk Modeling and Decisioning including artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Teresa holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Informatics and lives in Sydney Australia
Sarah Murphy, Principal Director, Accenture Data and AI
As a Principal Director at Accenture, Sarah leads the growth of Intelligent Decisioning within the Applied Intelligence practice, leveraging 25+ years of risk management and operational experience in financial services and global consulting.
Sarah has a proven track record of solving complex risk issues across the credit customer lifecycle, applying predictive analytics and decision management to transform business culture, minimize exposure, increase profitability, and create risk management centers of excellence. She also has a strong executive presence and excellent communication skills, enabling her to partner with clients and stakeholders at all levels and deliver value-added solutions.
Passionate about staying at the forefront of the latest trends and technologies in intelligent decisioning, her mission is to help organizations harness the power of data and analytics to optimize their decision making, enhance their customer experience, and achieve their strategic goals.
Over the years, GARP and SAS have partnered to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to risk management. Now we present a series of podcasts focused on making financial risk-based decisions in light of the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
About SAS
SAS is a global leader in data and AI. We help organizations transform data into trusted decisions faster by providing knowledge in the moments that matter. No matter how you prioritize risk, SAS has proven solutions and best practices to help organizations establish a risk-aware culture, optimize capital and liquidity, and meet regulatory demands.
SAS® provides on-demand, high-performance risk analytics to ensure greater efficiency and transparency. Strike the right balance between short- and long-term strategies. And confidently address changing regulations and manage compliance.
Discover why 90% of Fortune 100 companies choose SAS to solve their toughest challenges at sas.com/riskmanagement.
Hear from Cristian deRitis, deputy chief economist at Moody’s analytics, about the evolution of stress testing, current trends, and the biggest challenges facing banks and regulators.
Regulatory stress tests play a vital role in ensuring that large banks hold enough capital to withstand extreme recessions, while internal stress tests at banks are used for everything from capital and liquidity planning to risk monitoring, risk identification and operational resilience.
The 2023 failures of a group of mid-sized U.S. banks, however, have led some critics to question whether the Federal Reserve’s annual stress test is broad enough, comprehensive enough and sufficiently proactive – particularly with respect to emerging threats and rare tail risks. Globally, meanwhile, we’ve seen stress testing expand beyond capital and liquidity and into areas like climate risk, which has created a whole new set of hurdles for regulators and banks.
In the future, to address perceived flaws, it’s feasible that we could see a broadening of regulatory stress tests and changes to central banks’ approaches to scenarios. Banks, meanwhile, may consider increasing the frequency of their internal tests and expanding their use of AI models to rapidly factor in a wider array of scenarios.
Relevant Links:
Modeling Risk (Risk Intelligence column by Cristian deRitis)
Speaker’s Bio
Cristian deRitis is Managing Director and Deputy Chief Economist at Moody's Analytics. As the head of econometric model research and development, he specializes in the analysis of current and future economic conditions, scenario design, consumer credit markets and housing. In addition to his published research, Cristian is a co-host on the popular Inside Economics Podcast. He can be reached at cristian.deritis@moodys.com.
Nirav Shah, a founding partner at Versor Investments, speaks with GARP editorial director Robert Sales about the pros and cons of artificial intelligence and machine learning for buy-side institutions.
Though significant concerns remain about the bias, fairness an explainability of AI and ML, these innovative technologies have made great inroads in financial services. Banks, for example, now use AI and ML for everything from anti-money laundering to fraud detection to risk modeling and analysis, while asset management firms employ these tools for portfolio optimization and risk mitigation.
Nirav Shah discusses the role ML plays in risk reduction and alpha generation at buy-side institutions, and offers his thoughts on, among other topics, data governance and data management challenges, the growth of generative AI, the importance of regulation, and potential future applications of this technology.
Speaker’s Bio
Nirav Shah is a founding partner at Versor Investments, where he has built innovative, scalable systems for using alternative data and AI/ML techniques. These tools are used in the firm's investment strategies, particularly within the futures and equities markets. He has also worked on various parts of the investment process at Versor, ranging from research to portfolio construction and trading.
He has nearly two decades of experience in quantitative and systematic investment management. Prior to Versor Investments, he founded a consulting firm focused on quantitative research. Earlier, he served as Vice President at Investcorp in New York, where he focused on asset allocation and quantitative research. His career also includes a role as a Quantitative Researcher at Phoenix Global Capital Management, a CTA based in Chicago.
Hear from Daniel Wagner, CEO of Country Risk Solutions, about the complexities of the global geopolitical risk landscape.
In these volatile and uncertain times, identifying, measuring and managing geopolitical risk is a daunting task. Everywhere we turn, geopolitical struggles are grabbing headlines, whether we’re talking about, for example, the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars, U.S.-China strategic relations, or Red Sea hostilities.
These multi-layered events are having a huge impact across the risk management spectrum, affecting everything from market risk to supply-chain risk to credit risk, cyber risk and liquidity risk. Complicating matters further, they are idiosyncratic and very difficult to predict.
Keeping all this in mind, there are certainly still steps that financial risk managers can take to better measure and mitigate geopolitical threats.
Our guest speaker, Daniel Wagner, is the perfect person to shed light on today’s complex geopolitical environment and to peer into the future.
Links From Today’s Discussion:
GARP Risk Snapshot April 2024: Geopolitical Risk
GARP Benchmarking Initiative (GBI)®
Speaker’s Bio
Daniel Wagner, founder and CEO, Country Risk Solutions
Daniel has more than three decades of experience assessing cross-border risk. He is an authority on political risk insurance and analysis and has worked for some of the world’s most respected and best-known companies, including AIG, GE, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank Group. Until the end of 2023, he was Adaptation Finance Lead and Technical Advisor on Private Capital Mobilization for COP28 in Abu Dhabi. Prior to that, he was Senior Investment Officer for Guarantees and Syndications at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in Beijing and Abu Dhabi.
Daniel has published 10 books – Decision-Making in the Polycrisis Era, The Chinese Epiphany, The Chinese Vortex, The America-China Divide, China Vision, AI Supremacy, Virtual Terror, Global Risk Agility and Decision-Making, Managing Country Risk, and Political Risk Insurance Guide – as well as more than 700 articles on current affairs and risk management. He is a regular contributor to such publications as the South China Morning Post, Sunday Guardian, Diplomatic Courier and Fair Observer, among many others. Please see www.countryrisksolutions.com for a full listing of his publications and media interviews.
In this podcast, Julie Muckleroy, Global Banking Strategist from SAS, and Abraham Izquierdo, Managing Director of Trading and Treasury Risks at Grupo Financiero Banorte, explore the top risk management trends for 2024.
With the start of 2024, persistent high interest rates and inflation remain key concerns. Adding to these challenges are potential conflict escalation in the Middle East, threats to global shipping lanes, and historically low water levels in Panama, among others.
The fallout from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and the rapid growth of Generative AI are also being analyzed, impacting both smaller financial institutions' balance sheets in the U.S. and the wider financial landscape.
Speakers’ Bios:
Abraham M Izquierdo, FRM: Managing Director of Trading & Treasury Risks at Grupo Financiero Banorte, overseeing balance sheet oversight, policy compliance, hedging strategies, and interest rate risk management. He also manages liquidity risk framework and the Basel III directive, as well as capital management and surveillance for Grupo Financiero Banorte.
Julie Muckleroy: Global Banking Strategist in SAS’ Global Industry Marketing organization. With a background in marketing leadership roles at SaaS organizations and large US banks like Bank of America and Wells Fargo, Julie brings extensive knowledge and expertise in global banking trends and marketing strategies. She evaluates the future state of banking as a strategist at SAS.
Over the years, GARP and SAS have partnered to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to risk management. Now we present a series of podcasts focused on making financial risk-based decisions in light of the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Learn more of the trends shaping the banking sector in 2024: The Year Ahead: Bank Trends for 2024
About SAS
As a leader in analytics, SAS’ award-winning capabilities in analytics, risk management, and other technology areas have helped customers across the globe solve their toughest and ever-evolving business problems. Its unrelenting commitment to innovation enables organizations across financial services to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. Through the latest developments in machine learning, natural language processing, forecasting, and optimization, SAS supports diverse environments and scales to meet changing needs. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk
Hear from Moody’s Analytics’ Cris deRitis about geopolitical risk, cybersecurity, political unease, supply-chain threats, and other key issues that will impact risk managers this year.
2023 was a hectic and extremely challenging year for risk managers. The U.S. regional banking crisis grabbed headlines, with failures being blamed on everything from poor risk culture and ineffective risk modeling to interest-rate volatility – and even to the speed at which news travels in the social media era.
Geopolitical risk and supply-chain risk also contributed to an environment of volatility and uncertainty, fueled by the start of a violent conflict between Israel and Hamas, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, and attacks on commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea. Technology, moreover, has evolved, with cyberattacks becoming more sophisticated and more prevalent, and with new innovations – like generative AI – bringing both risks and opportunities.
That leads us to today’s topic: namely, how will the remainder of 2024 shake out? What changes may be on the horizon, and which trends will have the greatest impact on the financial risk management landscape?
Cris deRitis, the deputy chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, sheds some light on what lies ahead for risk managers.
Links From Today’s Discussion:
https://www.garp.org/garp-benchmarking-initiative
https://www.garp.org/risk-intelligence/modeling-risk/all
SPEAKER BIO:
Cristian deRitis is the Deputy Chief Economist at Moody's Analytics. As the head of model research and development, he specializes in the analysis of current and future economic conditions, consumer credit markets and housing. Before joining Moody's Analytics, he worked for Fannie Mae. In addition to his published research, Cristian is named on two U.S. patents for credit modeling techniques. Cristian is also a co-host on the popular Inside Economics Podcast. He can be reached at cristian.deritis@moodys.com.
Hear veteran risk manager, advisor and professor Clifford Rossi’s viewpoints on trends, threats and opportunities in the commercial and residential real estate markets.
The past couple of years have been an extremely challenging time for risk practitioners charged with measuring and managing real estate risk. In both commercial real estate and residential real estate, concerns have been raised globally about interest rates, inflation and economic uncertainty. Indeed, in a recent Federal Reserve survey on salient risks – part of the Fed’s October Financial Stability Report – roughly 75 percent of respondents cited the potential for “large losses on CRE and residential real estate.”
CRE, more specifically, has been plagued by escalating vacancy rates for office buildings, thanks in part to the remote work trend that started during the pandemic and has since taken off. Residential real estate, meanwhile, has dealt with worries about housing affordability.
As a former CRO at multiple banks and as an ex-senior risk manager at Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac, Cliff Rossi, our honored guest today, knows all about the CRE and residential real estate risks facing financial institutions today. Cliff, the current Director of the Smith Enterprise Risk Consortium at the University of Maryland (UMD), speaks with GARP editorial director Robert Sales about global real estate concerns and challenges, and offers advice on how firms can more effectively manage their exposures.
SPEAKER’S BIO:Clifford Rossi (PhD) is the Director of the Smith Enterprise Risk Consortium at the University of Maryland (UMD) and a Professor-of-the-Practice and Executive-in-Residence at UMD’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. He is also the author of GARP’s monthly “CRO Outlook” column.
Prior to entering academia, Rossi had nearly 25 years of experience in banking and government, having held senior executive roles in risk management at several of the largest financial services companies. His most recent position was Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer for Citigroup’s Consumer Lending Group, where he was responsible for overseeing the risk of a $300+B global portfolio of mortgage, home equity, student loans and auto loans with 700 employees under his direction. While there he was intimately involved in Citi’s TARP and stress test activities. He also served as Chief Credit Officer at Washington Mutual (WaMu) and as Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer at Countrywide Bank.
Previous to these assignments, Rossi held senior risk management positions at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. He started his career during the thrift crisis at the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Domestic Finance and later at the Office of Thrift Supervision working on key policy issues affecting depositories. Rossi was also an adjunct professor in the Finance Department at the Robert H. Smith School of Business for eight years and has numerous academic and nonacademic articles on banking industry topics. Rossi is frequently quoted on financial policy issues in major newspapers and has appeared on such programs as C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and CNN’s Situation Room. His book for risk practitioners and graduate students, A Risk Professional's Survival Guide, was published in 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. His research interests are in financial and nonfinancial risk management, risk governance and analytics and climate risk.
Hear from Wall Street veteran and author Aaron Brown about the impact of fast-evolving technology on risk management.
Financial institutions are now using everything from machine-learning modeling and generative AI to blockchain and public-key cryptography for risk monitoring, measurement and mitigation. What’s more, we can see on the horizon the development of other tools – like central bank digital currencies – that could further alter the landscape.
However, each of these technologies present their own set of challenges, and it’s important for risk managers to understand both their advantages and potential drawbacks.
Aaron Brown, a renowned author and former CRO of AQR Capital Management, has had a front-row seat to the evolution of technology in financial risk management.
He joins GARP editorial director Robert Sales to discuss the pros and cons of technological innovations, and to explore what’s on the horizon, drawing on his previous work as a trader, portfolio manager, head of mortgage securities and risk manager for several global financial institutions.
SPEAKER'S BIO
Aaron Brown teaches finance and mathematics as an adjunct at NYU and writes Risk Intelligence’s monthly “Tech Perspectives” column. He is a distinguished risk manager who has held a variety of high-level positions on Wall Street, dating back to the early 1980s. Most recently, he served for 10 years as chief risk officer of the large hedge fund AQR Capital Management. His books on risk management include The Poker Face of Wall Street, Red-Blooded Risk, Financial Risk Management for Dummies and A World of Chance. In 2011, he was named GARP’s Risk Manager of the Year.
In this podcast Zeynep Salman, Head of Risk Decisioning, EMEA at SAS, will explore the top trends and market practices for financial institutions as they adapt to digitizing credit decisioning.
We will dive deeply into key success factors for establishing innovative credit customer journeys while achieving successful business outcomes that keep the lending business profitable. We will also discuss how a country’s regulatory requirements and market dynamics can affect the transformation journey.
Link from today’s discussion can be found here:
The Value of Credit Risk Transformations and the Role of AI
Speaker’s Bio
Zeynep Salman is a credit risk professional with experience managing originations, customer management, and collections teams for consumer and small business portfolios. She joined SAS in 2022 and is currently leading risk decisioning advisory activities across EMEA. Zeynep is passionate about driving automation, seamless customer experiences, convergence of credit and fraud evaluations across customer lifecycle, AI-driven customer engagements, and working with clients to support near and long-term strategic roadmaps to drive value.
Before joining SAS, Zeynep held key roles at financial institutions including Citibank, HSBC, Toyota Finance, and UniCredit, as well as software vendors such as FICO.
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Over the years, GARP and SAS have partnered to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to risk management. Now we present a series of podcasts focused on making financial risk-based decisions in light of the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
About SAS
As a leader in analytics, SAS’ award-winning capabilities in analytics, risk management, and other technology areas have helped customers across the globe solve their toughest and ever-evolving business problems. Its unrelenting commitment to innovation enables organizations across financial services to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. Through the latest developments in machine learning, natural language processing, forecasting, and optimization, SAS supports diverse environments and scales to meet changing needs. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk
Is it possible for financial institutions to offer on-demand, superior customer experiences while making risk decisions in near real-time in an increasingly digital and interconnected world? That is the question we’ll explore in this podcast featuring Terisa Roberts, Global Solution Lead, Risk Modeling and Decisioning at SAS, and Bruce Erb, Director – Credit Risk Consulting, KPMG.
Traditional financial institutions are encountering additional hurdles, including fierce competition from agile newcomers, new regulatory demands for operational resiliency, and increased technology risk. In an age of digital lending driven by artificial intelligence, what are modern financial institutions doing differently to remain agile and profitable while keeping costs in check?
We’ll delve into several strategies that financial institutions are adopting for risk-based decision-making to bolster their resilience in times of uncertainty.
Speakers
Terisa Roberts, Global Solution Lead, Risk Modeling and Decisioning, SAS
Terisa Roberts is a risk management professional with 15 years of experience primarily in the financial services sector. She is currently a Director and Global Solution lead for Risk Modeling and Decisioning at SAS.
Terisa has an extensive background in risk modeling for retail and commercial portfolios including regulatory capital stress testing and IFRS9/CECL. She advises banks, other financial services providers, and regulators concerning innovations in Risk Modeling and Decisioning including artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Teresa holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Informatics and lives in Sydney, Australia.
Bruce Erb, Director – Credit Risk Consulting, KPMG
Bruce Erb has been a risk professional for over 23 years in both industry and consulting. At KPMG, he has supported financial services clients in a variety of risk programs and initiatives with a current focus on transformation of credit and risk governance operating and execution models leveraging alternative approaches including automation, advanced analytics, and cognitive technologies.
Bruce was the product owner and co-inventor of an audit investigation tool that leveraged digitization, automation, and cognitive components to augment the way risk professionals evaluate and score a commercial loan. He was a loan officer for more than nine years before joining KPMG.
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Over the years, GARP and SAS have partnered to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to risk management. Now we present a series of podcasts focused on making financial risk-based decisions in light of the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
About SAS
As a leader in analytics, SAS’ award-winning capabilities in analytics, risk management, and other technology areas have helped customers across the globe solve their toughest and ever-evolving business problems. Its unrelenting commitment to innovation enables organizations across financial services to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. Through the latest developments in machine learning, natural language processing, forecasting, and optimization, SAS supports diverse environments and scales to meet changing needs. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk
Hear veteran risk manager, advisor and professor Clifford Rossi’s perspective on recent turmoil in the banking system, on where risk management fell short, and the profession’s readiness for future challenges.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and subsequent events inevitably invited comparisons with past crises. It was widely assumed that the damages of 2023 would be more contained than those of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. But they could similarly leave a long tail, with economic and regulatory repercussions well into the future.
A clear parallel between 2008 and 2023 is the spotlight placed on risk management. In the intervening years, the risk function in banking and financial services grew in prestige and responsibility – and its failings were documented as having played a role in SVB’s demise.
Drawing from regulatory experience early in his career, to senior risk and credit positions at major financial institutions, to his current professorship at the University of Maryland, Cliff Rossi has lived through multiple crises while observing the effectiveness and evolution of risk management. GARP Risk Intelligence’s CRO Outlook columnist, Rossi has been especially critical of boards of directors’ risk governance, one of many timely subjects covered in his podcast conversation with GARP contributing editor Jeff Kutler.
SPEAKER'S BIO
Clifford Rossi (PhD) is an Executive-in-Residence and Professor of the Practice at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. He is also the author of GARP’s monthly “CRO Outlook” column.
Prior to entering academia, Rossi had nearly 25 years of experience in banking and government, having held senior executive roles in risk management at several of the largest financial services companies. His most recent position was Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer for Citigroup’s Consumer Lending Group, where he was responsible for overseeing the risk of a $300+B global portfolio of mortgage, home equity, student loans and auto loans with 700 employees under his direction. While there he was intimately involved in Citi’s TARP and stress test activities. He also served as Chief Credit Officer at Washington Mutual (WaMu) and as Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer at Countrywide Bank.
Previous to these assignments, Rossi held senior risk management positions at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. He started his career during the thrift crisis at the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Domestic Finance and later at the Office of Thrift Supervision working on key policy issues affecting depositories. Rossi was also an adjunct professor in the Finance Department at the Robert H. Smith School of Business for eight years and has numerous academic and nonacademic articles on banking industry topics. Rossi is frequently quoted on financial policy issues in major newspapers and has appeared on such programs as C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and CNN’s Situation Room. His book for risk practitioners and graduate students, A Risk Professional's Survival Guide, was published in 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. His research interests are in financial and nonfinancial risk management, risk governance and analytics and climate risk.
Hear from Dr. Donald van Deventer, Managing Director--Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions at SAS, and Professor Robert Jarrow of Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business as we continue our discussion of the current banking climate as it relates to integrated balance sheet management — and specifically asset and liability management (ALM).
This special two-part podcast series will explore conditions under which a bank is at risk of a “run” by looking internally at their assets and liabilities. We will also consider how to model simulations to project when assets will become negative relative to liabilities and determine how to ensure resiliency within financial institutions.
Part 1 of this series will tackle the following topics:
Speaker Bios
Dr. Donald van Deventer, Managing Director--Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions @ SAS
He joined the Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions group at SAS Institute, Inc. in June 2022 through SAS’ acquisition of his previous firm, the Kamakura Corporation. He founded Kamakura in 1990 and served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer until the acquisition. Dr. van Deventer's emphasis at SAS Institute, Inc. is enterprise-wide risk management and modern credit risk technology. His primary financial consulting and research interests involve the practical application of leading-edge financial theory to solve critical financial risk management challenges.
Robert Jarrow is the Ronald P. and Susan E. Lynch Professor of Investment Management at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business. He is a co-creator of the Heath-Jarrow-Morton (HJM) model, the reduced form credit risk model, and the forward price martingale measure, the standards for pricing and hedging derivatives at major financial institutions. Jarrow is a pioneer of arbitrage-pricing theory and has written seven textbooks and over 225 pieces for academic journals.
Jarrow is on the advisory board of numerous academic journals including the Frontiers of Mathematical Finance. His research has won many awards, and he was named IAFE Financial Engineer of the Year in 1997. Jarrow is in the Fixed Income Analysts Society Hall of Fame, Risk Magazine’s 50-member Hall of Fame, is listed in the Who’s Who of Economics, and received Risk Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. He is currently an IAFE senior fellow and serves on various industry advisory boards.
Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to risk management. This time, we are partnering on a brand-new podcast, Risk and Resiliency to take a closer look at ways to face the challenges ahead, to be more agile, vigilant, and quickly adapt to shifting market conditions.
About SAS
As a leader in analytics, SAS’ award-winning capabilities in analytics, risk management, and other technology areas have helped customers across the globe solve their toughest and ever-evolving business problems. Its unrelenting commitment to innovation enables organizations across financial services to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. Through the latest developments in machine learning, natural language processing, forecasting, and optimization, SAS supports diverse environments and scales to meet changing needs. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk
Welcome back for the conclusion of this special two-part podcast series featuring Dr. Donald van Deventer, Managing Director--Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions at SAS, and Professor Robert Jarrow of Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business. We continue the discussion of the current banking climate as it relates to integrated balance sheet management — and specifically asset and liability management (ALM).
Part two of this series will tackle the following topics:
Speaker Bios
Dr. Donald van Deventer, Managing Director--Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions @ SAS
He joined the Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions group at SAS Institute, Inc. in June 2022 through SAS’ acquisition of his previous firm, the Kamakura Corporation. He founded Kamakura in 1990 and served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer until the acquisition. Dr. van Deventer's emphasis at SAS Institute, Inc. is enterprise-wide risk management and modern credit risk technology. His primary financial consulting and research interests involve the practical application of leading-edge financial theory to solve critical financial risk management challenges.
Robert Jarrow is the Ronald P. and Susan E. Lynch Professor of Investment Management at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business. He is a co-creator of the Heath-Jarrow-Morton (HJM) model, the reduced form credit risk model, and the forward price martingale measure, the standards for pricing and hedging derivatives at major financial institutions. Jarrow is a pioneer of arbitrage-pricing theory and has written seven textbooks and over 225 pieces for academic journals.
Jarrow is on the advisory board of numerous academic journals including the Frontiers of Mathematical Finance. His research has won many awards, and he was named IAFE Financial Engineer of the Year in 1997. Jarrow is in the Fixed Income Analysts Society Hall of Fame, Risk Magazine’s 50-member Hall of Fame, is listed in the Who’s Who of Economics, and received Risk Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. He is currently an IAFE senior fellow and serves on various industry advisory boards.
Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to risk management. This time, we are partnering on a brand-new podcast, Risk and Resiliency to take a closer look at ways to face the challenges ahead, to be more agile, vigilant, and quickly adapt to shifting market conditions.
About SAS
As a leader in analytics, SAS’ award-winning capabilities in analytics, risk management, and other technology areas have helped customers across the globe solve their toughest and ever-evolving business problems. Its unrelenting commitment to innovation enables organizations across financial services to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. Through the latest developments in machine learning, natural language processing, forecasting, and optimization, SAS supports diverse environments and scales to meet changing needs. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk
Hear from risk modeling expert Tony Hughes about the parts various risk management techniques played in recent bank failures, as well as the current challenges facing modelers.
Risk models have grabbed headlines for all the wrong reasons over the past couple of years, and now they are in the news again thanks to the sudden collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. People want to know why the internal risk models at these banks did not properly account for interest-rate risk and why they seemed completely unprepared when their depositors made a mad dash for the exits.
The failures have also raised thought-provoking questions about liquidity risk management deficiencies, the proper use of stress testing, risk governance problems, and the flaws in current bank regulation.
What’s more, these issues are being raised at a time when modelers are contending with other significant challenges, such as forecasting for expected credit losses during a time of great uncertainty.
Risk modeling maestro Tony Hughes, Risk Intelligence’s “Risk Weighted” columnist, joins GARP editorial director Robert Sales to discuss some of the hottest FRM issues of today.
Speaker's Bio:
Tony Hughes is a risk modeling and ESG expert. He has more than 20 years of experience as a senior risk professional in North America, Europe and Australia, specializing in model risk management, model build/validation and quantitative climate risk solutions.
Hear risk management prognostications from Cris deRitis, the deputy chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
Risk managers have been severely tested over the past 12 months. Rising interest rates, supply-chain problems, inflation and heightened geopolitical risk contributed to an environment of volatility and uncertainty, and many financial institutions grabbed headlines for all of the wrong reasons.
Operational risk disasters, for example, have cost large banks hundreds of millions of dollars. Credit risk modelers, meanwhile, are still trying to figure out the best path forward after wrongly forecasting a wave of defaults amid the pandemic.
The financial sector was also hit hard by data breaches that exposed cybersecurity flaws, while cryptocurrencies, highlighted by the collapse of FTX, experienced a host of failures as part of the so-called “crypto winter.” Last but certainly not least, we’ve witnessed the expansion of artificial intelligence in financial risk management, though concerns about explainability, bias and transparency remain.
How will the remainder of 2023 of shake out? What regulatory changes may be on the horizon, and which trends will have the greatest impact? Cris deRitis, the deputy chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, speaks with GARP editorial director Robert Sales about what lies ahead for risk managers.
Speaker’s Bio:
Cristian deRitis is the Deputy Chief Economist at Moody's Analytics. As the head of model research and development, he specializes in the analysis of current and future economic conditions, consumer credit markets and housing. Before joining Moody's Analytics, he worked for Fannie Mae. In addition to his published research, Cristian is named on two U.S. patents for credit modeling techniques. He can be reached at cristian.deritis@moodys.com.
Hear from Dr. Donald van Deventer, Managing Director--Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions @ SAS, as we discuss the impact of current market trends on asset liability management
With a possible recession looming and inflation near its highest levels since the 1980s, navigating around balance sheet issues remains complex. In this first of a series of podcasts on asset and liability management (ALM) featuring academic and industry experts, we will tackle the following topics:
· The current regulatory and marketplace-driven challenges for risk analytics
· How to handle term structure modeling in times of rising interest rates and inverted yield curves
· Requirements for quantitative approaches in ALM in the current environment
Speaker Bio
Dr. Donald van Deventer, Managing Director--Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions @ SAS
Dr. Donald van Deventer joined the Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions group at SAS Institute, Inc. in June 2022 through SAS’ acquisition of his previous firm, the Kamakura Corporation. He founded Kamakura in 1990 and served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer until the acquisition.
Dr. van Deventer's emphasis at SAS Institute, Inc. is enterprise-wide risk management and modern credit risk technology. His primary financial consulting and research interests involve the practical application of leading-edge financial theory to solve critical financial risk management challenges.
Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to risk management. This time, we are partnering on a brand-new podcast, Risk and Resiliency to take a closer look at ways to face the challenges ahead, to be more agile, vigilant, and quickly adapt to shifting market conditions.
About SAS As a leader in analytics, SAS’ award-winning capabilities in analytics, risk management, and other technology areas have helped customers across the globe solve their toughest and ever-evolving business problems. Its unrelenting commitment to innovation enables organizations across financial services to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. Through the latest developments in machine learning, natural language processing, forecasting, and optimization, SAS supports diverse environments and scales to meet changing needs. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk
Hear from Alla Gil, the co-founder and CEO of Straterix, as we examine the liquidity risk challenges and trends that have been fueled by extremely rare market conditions.
In a recent survey conducted by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, 80% of economists named stagflation – or a combination of high inflation and stagnant growth – as the greatest long-term risk to the U.S. economy. The economists said that stagflation presents an even bigger threat than a 2023 recession, and this news has undoubtedly added to the consternation currently felt by liquidity risk managers.
We haven’t seen a true period of stagflation in the U.S. since the oil crisis of the 1970s, and its therefore very difficult to factor this anomalous macroeconomic risk into contemporary liquidity risk models.
Alla Gil joins GARP editorial director Robert Sales to discuss the impact of stagflation and the steps risk practitioners responsible for modeling and managing liquidity risk can take to ensure that they have enough cash on hand, both now and in the future?
SPEAKER’s BIO:
Alla Gil is CEO and co-founder of Straterix Inc. With an academic background in theoretical mathematics, she began her Wall Street career at Goldman Sachs, working on stochastic models for derivative pricing. While heading Global Strategic Advisory teams at Citigroup, Nomura - and again at Goldman Sachs - she introduced stochastic modelling and an optimization approach to the world of corporate finance. Over a 20-year period, Alla advised banks, sovereign treasuries, insurance companies, asset managers, and pension funds on ALM, stress testing, long-term risk projections, liquidity, optimal capital allocation and balance sheet optimization With Straterix, she has developed a methodology and tools that enable clients to automate the process of scenario creation and expansion to assist in strategic capital planning and optimization, as well as risk management and stress testing.
Hear from Prof. Clifford Rossi as we examine some of today’s biggest financial risk modeling challenges.
Risk modelers have recently been befuddled by rare and powerful non-financial events, including the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, radical weather happenings, and a supply-chain crisis. What are the characteristics and impacts of these unpredictable incidents? In this podcast, University of Maryland professor and GARP CRO Outlook columnist Clifford Rossi will address these issues, and also share his views on how financial institutions can better understand these risks and link them properly to financial losses.
In the financial services industry, risks related to climate change are now considered major, resulting in all firms assessing how to incorporate climate risk in financial decision making. As we find ourselves in the decisive decade, there is an urgency for financial services to not only better manage the financial and non-financial risks of climate change but also lead the way in sustainable finance. The scale and complexity of the problem demand new thinking and new technologies that will integrate well with existing risk management ecosystems.
In this episode, we’ll explore how AI and advanced analytics can help assess and address climate risk, while keeping the business lights on.
This episode concludes a four-part series examining Responsible AI. Listen to the previous episodes here:
Part One: Alternative Data in Risk Modeling
Part Two: Explainable/Interpretable AI
Part Three: Addressing Bias and Fairness in AI Systems
Learn More: From Crisis to Opportunity: Redefining Risk Management | SAS
Speakers
Mark Nasila, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, FirstRand Risk
Dr. Mark Nasila is the Chief Data and Analytics Officer of FirstRand Risk, a Singularity University Faculty. He is also a steering committee member of the National Institute for Theoretical Physics and Computational Sciences (NITheCS). As an experienced AI and data science expert, he ensures the techniques and methodologies he introduces into FNB are at the forefront of where banking is headed, both locally and internationally. He is the developer and the brain behind Manila, an AI system FNB has harnessed to reimagine its risk management and forensic due diligence processes. He holds a PhD in Mathematical Statistics from the Nelson Mandela University, and is also an alumni of the SingularityU South Africa Executive programme. He was named one of the Corinium Global Intelligence “2020 Global Top 100 Innovators in data and analytics.”
Terisa Roberts, Global Solution Lead, Risk Modeling and Decisioning, SAS
Terisa Roberts is a well-rounded risk management professional with 15 years of risk management experience working predominantly in the financial services sector. She is currently a Director and Global Solution lead for Risk Modeling and Decisioning at SAS.
She has extensive experience in risk modeling topics for retail and commercial portfolios including regulatory capital stress testing and IFRS9/CECL. She advises banks other financial services providers as well as regulators on innovations in Risk Modeling and Decisioning including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
She holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Informatics and lives in Sydney, Australia with her family.
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Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our podcast series.
About SAS
As a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.
In this episode, we will continue with part three of a four-part series looking at Responsible AI (Listen to part one: Alternative Data in Risk Modeling and part two: Explainable/Interpretable AI). “Fairness in AI” is getting a lot of attention, especially related to credit decisioning, not only for onboarding but throughout the credit lifecycle. This episode explores the intersection of fairness and trust, demonstrates why defining - much less ensuring - fairness is more difficult than it sounds, and provides strategies organizations can use to enable fair and trustworthy AI. Learn More: From Crisis to Opportunity: Redefining Risk Management | SAS Speakers Preeti Shivpuri, Head of AI Strategy and Governance, Deloitte Canada Preeti Shivpuri is a leader in data and analytics strategy helping organizations effectively manage data and information assets to generate insights, elevate customer experience, drive growth and operational efficiency, while meeting evolving regulatory demands. She advises clients on execution strategies and sound governance, enabling them to realize benefits aligned to their business goals throughout their data insights journey. She leads Trustworthy AI and Ethics within Deloitte helping organizations to operationalize and scale AI solution responsibly with the right balance of innovation vs controls. Kimberly Nevala, Strategic Advisor, SAS Kimberly Nevala is a Strategic Advisor at SAS. Kimberly provides counsel on the strategic value and real-world realities of emerging advanced analytics and information trends to companies worldwide. Kimberly is currently focused on demystifying the business potential and practical implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). -----------------------
Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series. About SAS As a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.
In this episode, we will continue with part two of a four-part series looking at Responsible AI (Listen to part one: Alternative Data in Risk Modeling). One of the major challenges with effectively developing, deploying, and managing AI systems are often related to the “black box” nature of the model. Specifically, the complexity and non-linear nature of variables in some black-box AI models may be difficult to explain or understand. This includes explainability of the model logic as well as the individual decisions made by the model. In addition, the relative lack of transparency challenges model development and model validation teams to foresee unintended consequences from model usage, which could create an operational risk if the model is implemented in production. Speakers Iain Brown, Ph.D., Head of Data Science, SAS UK&I Matthew Jones, Ph.D., Head of Retail Decision Modelling, Risk Community, Nationwide Building Society Moderator: Lisa Ponti, Ph.D., Vice President, Educational Outreach, Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) ----------------------- Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series. About SAS As a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.
In this episode, we begin a four part series looking at Responsible AI by looking at Alternative Data in risk Modeling. Over the course of the coming months we will also look at Explainable / Interpretable AI, Fairness and Bias in AI, and the new frontier of climate models. Survey Says: Risk management key to resiliency in 2021 and beyond; click her to learn more and read the full report. To view GARP's DE&I webcast, "Risk Modeling to Further Diversity and Inclusion", mentioned in this episode - click here. Learn More: From Crisis to Opportunity: Redefining Risk Management | SAS Speaker Bio Terisa Roberts is a well-rounded risk management professional with 15 years of risk management experience, working predominantly in the financial services sector. She is currently a Director and Global Solution lead for Risk Modeling and Decisioning at SAS. She has extensive experience in risk modeling topics for retail and commercial portfolios including regulatory capital, stress testing and IFRS9/CECL. She advises banks, other financial services providers as well as regulators on innovations in Risk Modeling and Decisioning including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. She holds a Ph. D in Operations Research and Informatics and lives in Sydney, Australia with her family. -----------------------
Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series.
About SASAs a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.
Many companies are considering their de-risking options and strategies for pension risk transfer (PRT). PRT is steadily increasing in the U.S. but comes with a high-level liability. Today we speak with Sarvesh Soi, Principal, Wealth Practice at Buck to get insight on the latest strategies around pension de-risking.
Speaker Bio:
Sarvesh Soi, FCA, EA, CFA | Principal, Wealth practice, Buck
Sarvesh serves as the head of the Financial Risk Management group at Buck. He is a seasoned actuary with 19 years of broad and diverse experience in pensions and investments. In recent years, his primary focus has been developing, implementing, and monitoring liability driven investment solutions for defined benefit pension plan sponsors. Sarvesh graduated with a bachelor's degree in actuarial mathematics from the University of Michigan and is an Enrolled Actuary (EA), CFA Charterholder, and a Fellow of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries (FCA).
Please note that in discussing pension policies during COVID, Mr. Soi intended to say “withdrawal funds” and not “borrow funds.”
To view the video referenced in the discussion, click here.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are transforming the ways in which financial institutions manage risk. Driven by a proliferation of data and computing power, institutions are harnessing these tools to build predictive models that enhance decision making. Today, firms are using AI and ML to improve risk management by identifying early warning signals to manage credit risk and providing investment managers with capabilities to interpret unstructured ESG data for portfolio management.
In this podcast, Jeff D’Avignon, from FIS Global, leads a conversation with Riyaz Nakhooda, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Accern and Justin Chan, Product Director for FIS’ Cross Asset Trading and Risk business. They discuss the machine learning revolution and what it means for the financial services industry, practical applications of new and emerging technologies, potential challenges to adoption, and their outlook for the future.
Justin Chan, Product Director, Cross-Asset Trading & Risk, FIS Global
Jeff D’Avignon, Senior Sales Executive, Cross-Asset Trading & Risk, FIS Global
Riyaz Nakhooda, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Accern
Over the next two years, driven in part by the economic consequences of COVID-19 and the shift toward work-from-home, financial institutions are expected to pay a lot of attention to credit risk, cybersecurity, ESG, non-financial risks, data management, third-party risk and AI. In this podcast, GARP editorial director Robert Sales discusses these trends and other findings from Deloitte’s recent worldwide risk management survey with J.H. Caldwell - the risk advisory leader for Deloitte’s financial services practice globally.
Speaker Bio
J.H. Caldwell is a partner at Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory, Deloitte & Touche LLP, and serves as the risk advisory leader for Deloitte’s financial services practice globally. In this role, he is responsible for the development of the overall strategic direction of the practice, including helping clients in key areas like digital, technology, financial, cyber, strategic, regulatory and operational risks. He has more than 30 years of experience in the risk space.
Circling back on the issue of cybersecurity after many months of COVID, we speak with Robert H. Rosenzweig, RPLU, a SVP and National Cyber Practice Leader at Risk Strategies on the current environment for cyberthreats, what are the trends/issues firms are facing and implications for risk managers. Topics discussed include: the changing nature of threats, the urgency for firms to build a resilient cybersecurity strategy that incorporates strong data governance and protection, protecting IT infrastructure and systems in the remote work environment, potential financial impacts due to cyber threats and the increased use of cyber insurance to offset risks.
Speaker Bio
Robert H. Rosenzweig, RPLU, is a Senior Vice President and the National Cyber Risk Practice Leader at Risk Strategies. In this role Rob oversees all of the firm’s cyber professionals and works directly with the firm’s clients and prospects on creating comprehensive and customized coverage for their data security, privacy, and errors & omissions exposures. Rob is also responsible for coordinating the firm’s overall cyber strategy nationally. A published writer and frequent interview subject on cyber liability topics, he also has participated on panels and led seminars on a variety of related topics. Rob currently holds the Cyber COPE Insurance Certification from Chubb & Carnegie Mellon University and a designation as a Registered Professional Liability Underwriter. Rob received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Government & Economics from Hamilton College.
Edward Hancox, VP, Certification and Educational Programs and Beth Gould Creller, SVP, Certification and Educational Programs discuss the decision to sunset the Energy Risk Professional (ERP) Certification and how GARP can continue to serve the Energy industry and it’s risk professionals going forward.
GARP’s Robert Sales leads a roundtable with Randy Ahluwalia, Managing Director, BNY Mellon, Gokce Ozcan, Partner, Oliver Wyman and Wei Chen, FRM, Director, Global Risk Consulting , Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions at SAS on bank asset and liability management, including challenges around the aspiration of industry toward “integrated balance sheet management” as well as how COVID-19 and possible future regulation may impact this area.
Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series.
About SASAs a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.
From Respond to Re-imagine – PART 2: Charting the journey forward for banking and risk management
In this episode, we continue our circle back with Naeem Siddiqi, Senior Advisor, Risk and Quantitative Solutions, SAS, to explore the effects of COVID-19 on banks and risk managers, six months out from our previous discussions. GARP’s Robert Sales moderates this two-part discussion with Naeem, who is also joined by Alex Kwiatkowski - Principal Industry Consultant, Global Banking Practice, SAS - to consider the current and potential post-pandemic impact of the coronavirus on credit risk, cyber risk, operational resilience and the banking business model.
You can listen to our earlier episodes with Naeem here:
For more resources on this topic: click here.
Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series.
About SAS
As a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.
SPEAKER BIOS
Naeem Siddiqi
Senior Advisor, Risk and Quantitative Solutions, SAS
Naeem Siddiqi is the author of the books Credit Risk Scorecards and Intelligent Credit Scoring, and has advised and trained bankers in over 20 countries on the art and science of credit scoring. He has worked in retail credit risk management since 1992, both as a consultant and as a risk manager at financial institutions.
At SAS, Siddiqi played a key role in the development of products relating to credit scoring. He is currently responsible for advising customers on issues concerning credit scoring and decisioning, risk strategy, climate change risk, and AI/ML in credit risk, as well as modernizing analytics infrastructures. He continues to meet and advise C-level bankers at top lending institutions worldwide.
Siddiqi was granted a bachelor’s in engineering with honors from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of London, and a master’s in business administration from York University in Toronto.
Alex Kwiatkowski
Principal Industry Consultant, Global Banking Practice, SAS
Alex Kwiatkowski is SAS’s Industry Lead for Banking & Capital Markets. His role centers on articulating and amplifying company strategy and point of view to C-level executives, partners, media and influencers, along with creating powerful narratives and compelling content for thought-leadership purposes.
Prior to joining SAS in October 2017, Alex was the Senior Strategist for Banking and Digital Channels at Finastra (formerly Misys). Before this, Alex ran IDC’s Financial Insights team in Europe, where he was responsible for all advisory and consulting services, working closely with banks, technology vendors and service providers. He also spent four years as a Principal Analyst within Ovum’s Financial Services Technology Practice, and prior to that completed a stint as a senior manager within LloydsTSB’s Business Delivery team.
With a career spanning over 15 years in the financial services industry, and a decade spent in the fast-moving telco world before that, Alex is a veritable mine of significant and valuable knowledge. He is full of keen insights into how the sector must evolve, is blessed with a restless curiosity to explore and challenge traditional thinking, and possesses an unquenchable thirst for discovering new information – from the trivial to the revelatory – to help form his opinions. A regular speaker at major global industry conferences – including Asian Banker Summit, Retail Banking Europe, FT Middle East Banking Forum, and Retail Banking Asia – Alex is an energized and engaging keynote, willing to tackle the biggest and most controversial issues head-on.
Alex holds a BA in Contemporary East European Studies from UCL.
From Respond to Re-imagine – PART 1: Charting the journey forward for banking and risk management
In this episode, we circle back with Naeem Siddiqi, Senior Advisor, Risk and Quantitative Solutions, SAS, to explore the effects of COVID-19 on banks and risk managers, six months out from our previous discussions. GARP’s Robert Sales moderates this two-part discussion with Naeem, who is also joined by Alex Kwiatkowski - Principal Industry Consultant, Global Banking Practice, SAS - to consider the current and potential post-pandemic impact of the coronavirus on credit risk, cyber risk, operational resilience and the banking business model.
For more resources on this topic: click here.
Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series.
About SASAs a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.
SPEAKER BIOS
Naeem Siddiqi
Senior Advisor, Risk and Quantitative Solutions, SAS
Naeem Siddiqi is the author of the books Credit Risk Scorecards and Intelligent Credit Scoring, and has advised and trained bankers in over 20 countries on the art and science of credit scoring. He has worked in retail credit risk management since 1992, both as a consultant and as a risk manager at financial institutions.
At SAS, Siddiqi played a key role in the development of products relating to credit scoring. He is currently responsible for advising customers on issues concerning credit scoring and decisioning, risk strategy, climate change risk, and AI/ML in credit risk, as well as modernizing analytics infrastructures. He continues to meet and advise C-level bankers at top lending institutions worldwide.
Siddiqi was granted a bachelor’s in engineering with honors from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of London, and a master’s in business administration from York University in Toronto.
Alex Kwiatkowski
Principal Industry Consultant, Global Banking Practice, SAS
Alex Kwiatkowski is SAS’s Industry Lead for Banking & Capital Markets. His role centers on articulating and amplifying company strategy and point of view to C-level executives, partners, media and influencers, along with creating powerful narratives and compelling content for thought-leadership purposes.
Prior to joining SAS in October 2017, Alex was the Senior Strategist for Banking and Digital Channels at Finastra (formerly Misys). Before this, Alex ran IDC’s Financial Insights team in Europe, where he was responsible for all advisory and consulting services, working closely with banks, technology vendors and service providers. He also spent four years as a Principal Analyst within Ovum’s Financial Services Technology Practice, and prior to that completed a stint as a senior manager within LloydsTSB’s Business Delivery team.
With a career spanning over 15 years in the financial services industry, and a decade spent in the fast-moving telco world before that, Alex is a veritable mine of significant and valuable knowledge. He is full of keen insights into how the sector must evolve, is blessed with a restless curiosity to explore and challenge traditional thinking, and possesses an unquenchable thirst for discovering new information – from the trivial to the revelatory – to help form his opinions. A regular speaker at major global industry conferences – including Asian Banker Summit, Retail Banking Europe, FT Middle East Banking Forum, and Retail Banking Asia – Alex is an energized and engaging keynote, willing to tackle the biggest and most controversial issues head-on.
Alex holds a BA in Contemporary East European Studies from UCL.
COVID-19 has resulted in significant decreases in demand for electricity, primarily due social distancing and quarantine policies. Glen Swindle, Managing Partner at Scoville Risk Partners, an energy analytics firm, joins us to take a deeper dive into the impact of COVID-19, and to look at other uncertainty factors driving electricity markets today. Glen will also discuss how markets may adapt to meet new challenges in this ever-changing field.
Glen Swindle, Managing Partner, Scoville Risk Partners
Glen Swindle is Managing Partner at Scoville Risk Partners, an energy analytics firm. Glen has held senior positions at Constellation Energy from 2000 to 2004 where he ran the Strategies group for the merchant energy business and at Credit Suisse from 2004 to 2012 where he was co-head of electricity and natural gas trading. Previously he held tenured positions at UCSB and Cornell University, in addition to adjunct positions at New York University and Rutgers. Glen is the author of Valuation and Risk Management in Energy Markets (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Natural Gas Trading in North America (Scoville Risk Partners, 2018). He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University, an M.S.E. in Mechanical Aerospace Engineering from Princeton, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech.
The pandemic has certainly had a significant impact on the third line of defense in risk management, presenting audit with significant challenges in areas like credit risk modeling, emerging risk evaluation, internal controls and remote working. In this podcast, Citi’s Chief Auditor for risk, Andy Blight, discusses the fallout from COVID-19, the changes Citi’s audit team made in response to the crisis, and the audit adaptations we may see post-pandemic.
Andy Blight, Chief Auditor – Risk, Citi
Andy Blight is the Chief Auditor for Risk, responsible for Internal Audit’s coverage of Citi’s global independent risk management including Market Risk, Credit Risk, Operational Risk and Model Risk. Andy has over 20 years of experience in the banking industry in a number of Internal Audit and Risk Management roles. Prior to this role, Andy was Citi’s Regional Chief Auditor for EMEA.
Andy originally joined Citi Internal Audit in 2014 from JPMorgan, where he was Executive Director, EMEA Corporate Audit. Prior to JPMorgan, Andy spent 7 years at Standard Chartered in various positions in London and Singapore, including Head of Audit for Consumer Banking and Head of Audit for Group Functions & Risk. In addition to his audit experience, Andy has worked in Market Risk Management and Operational Risk Management functions at ING and Barclays Capital.
Andy is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Internal Auditors (CMIIA), Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (FCA), Qualified in Internal Audit Leadership (QIAL) and a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA).
The pandemic has had a dramatic impact on commercial real estate, greatly dimming the short-term attractiveness of big cities while triggering extremely high delinquency rates on CRE loans and skyrocketing office vacancies.
In this podcast, we speak with Bob Lieber, executive managing director at Island Capital Group, about the repercussions of COVID-19, the differences between this pandemic and other crises, the work-from-home approach, the unique CRE investment opportunities yielded by the market dislocation, and the potential “new normal” for offices after the development of a vaccine.
Clearly, the impacts of COVID-19 on banks globally are unprecedented and requiring huge pivots in a short time. Join us on this podcast where our experts discuss banking challenges, the impacts on balance sheet reporting, relationships with regulators, auditors and investors, what it all means for loan portfolios, the intersections with governments and supervisory authorities, and the implications for CECL during this critical year.
For more resources on this issue from SAS - click below:
Tackle the New Complexity of IFRS 9 and CECL Standards Banking Analytics Solutions in the age of COVID-19Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series.
About SASAs a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.
Speaker Bios:
Prof. Dr. Donald Baillie is the head of the Risk Practice for Austria, Germany & Switzerland at SAS. He has 25+ years’ experience in the Financial Markets, and Risk Management in particular, having worked for banks (Treasury and Market Risk), a big-4 consultancy, and most recently as managing director of a medium-sized international management consultancy. He has been involved in more than 100 Finance and Risk Management projects throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Donald holds a professorship at a University of Applied Science in Vienna, and has taught Finance, Risk and Data Science courses for almost 20 years and (co)authored several books. In addition to other professional certifications such as Stock and Derivatives Markets trading licenses, he is a proud holder of GARP’s FRM certification.
Manuel Fortes is the Global Solution Lead for Expected Credit Loss at SAS , with strong Industry, risk and SAS knowledge within a wide spectrum of risk solutions. More than 20 years of experience, ranging from data modelling and ETL processes, including risk modelling and reporting, to solution implementation, in the Risk and Finance area.
Tim McPeak is a Principal Industry Consultant with the Risk Research & Quantitative Solutions division at SAS. He has over 25 years of experience in the financial services industry with a specific focus on credit risk management. Prior to joining SAS, Tim worked as a Senior Risk Management Consultant with financial technology firm Sageworks with previous experience in retail, commercial and investment banking.
We would like to thank our listeners for tuning in to our special subseries on COVID-19. We have had some fascinating and productive discussions and will surely continue to discuss this subject for a long time to come. We will, however, be easing from the weekly cadence on this subseries as we re-expand our coverage on other pressing elements of risk in finance and energy. We look forward bringing you more and more insights from thought leaders in risk over the coming months. Stay tuned.
**We’d like to take a moment to inform you that this climate series is moving to its own dedicated channel. All future episodes, as well as the previous four instalments of the series, will now be located on the Climate Risk Podcast channel. You can find us HERE. **
In this episode of the Climate Risk Podcast series, we are moving beyond financial services to look at how climate change will affect firms in the real economy. We will be joined by Julie Baddeley, one of the UK’s most experienced women directors, who will be sharing insights on this topic from the perspective of the Board.
Julie is also one of the founders of Chapter Zero, a fast-growing network for Chairs, Committee Chairs and Non-Executive Directors. Chapter Zero has been established to provide support, education and tools to this important group on the matters of climate change and the associated risks and opportunities. Links to find out more about Chapter Zero, as well as some of there useful educational tools, can be found below.
Links from today’s discussion
If you have any questions, thoughts or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com
Today, we welcome back Steve Durbin, Managing Director of the Information Security Forum (ISF), to discuss the evolving implications of data privacy in the face of our concerns around information pertaining to public health. Companies and employers are starting to collect and process new categories of potentially sensitive information about their employees, including whether they are displaying symptoms of the virus, the results of any COVID-19 testing and body temperature checks, and their geolocation data and social contact history. The imperative for public health is clear, but what new data privacy issues does this raise for companies and employees?
For more information on how the ISF works with organizations to address their challenges, please visit …. https://www.securityforum.org/
Steve Durbin – Biography
Steve Durbin is the Managing Director of the Information Security Forum (ISF). His main areas of focus include strategy, information technology, cyber security and the emerging security threat landscape across both the corporate and personal environments. He is a frequent speaker and commentator on technology and security issues.
Formerly at Ernst & Young, Steve has been involved with IPOs, mergers and acquisitions of fast-growth companies across Europe and the USA. Having previously been senior vice president at Gartner, he has advised a number of NASDAQ and NYSE listed global technology companies.
Steve has served as a Digital 50 advisory committee member in the United States, a body established to improve the talent pool for Fortune 500 boards around cyber security and information governance and he has been ranked as one of the top 10 individuals shaping the way that organizations and leaders approach information security careers. He has also recently been featured on the top 20 most influential list of leaders whose companies have a vision that shapes the conceptual landscape of their respective industries.
Steve is a Chartered Marketer, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Forbes Business Council Member and a visiting lecturer at Henley Business School where he speaks on the role of the Board in Cybersecurity.
Companies looking to expand globally might be hesitant to tap into new markets given how the business environment has changed so dramatically as a result of the pandemic. This moment in time is an inflection point for businesses to redefine their approach and strategy for global growth and a time to transform their old ways of doing such things as workforce planning, hiring. As CEO and co-founder of Velocity Global, Ben Wright helps companies to place the "new normal" in context for business that want to expand globally in today’s climate and while staying agile and controlling risk.
Today’s chief risk officers must not only contend with the economic impact and shock of the pandemic but also manage complex challenges like racial violence, climate change, geo-political change and global supply-chain failure. Robert Sales, GARP’s Editorial Director, speaks with Brenda Boultwood, former senior vice president and chief risk officer at Constellation Energy, and who has served as a board member at both the Committee of Chief Risk Officers (CCRO) and GARP, about what issues top risk executives should be prioritizing, and how standard risk management techniques help firms reinvent themselves and find timely answers to risk quandaries.
For more from Brenda on this topic, click here for her CRO Outlook Column in GARP’s Risk Intelligence area.
Speaker Bio
Brenda Boultwood is an independent risk management consultant. She is the former senior vice president and chief risk officer at Constellation Energy, and has served as a board member at both the Committee of Chief Risk Officers (CCRO) and GARP. Previously, she was a senior vice president of industry solutions at MetricStream, where she was responsible for a portfolio of key industry verticals, including energy and utilities, federal agencies, strategic banking and financial services. Before that, she worked in a number of risk management, business roles and as the global head of strategy, Alternative Investment Services, at JPMorgan Chase, where she developed the strategy for the company's hedge fund services, private equity fund services, leveraged loan services and global derivative services. She currently serves on the board of directors at the Anne Arundel Workforce Development Corporation.
The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of environmental and social risk factors, as well as strong governance. Business structures are changing to become more resilient and sustainable, leading to a greater focus on G and S as companies align purpose with profits. In this podcast, Elena Philipova, Global Head of ESG Proposition at Refinitiv, discusses the primary gaps the current crisis has revealed and how incorporating ESG factors can mitigate risk.
For further insights from Refiitiv, tune into the Refinitiv Sustainability Perspectives podcast.
Speaker Bio
Elena Philipova, Global Head ESG Proposition, Refinitiv
Elena is the Global Head ESG Proposition at Refinitiv, formerly the Financial and Risk business of Thomson Reuters. She is responsible for the end-to-end management of the ESG business, products and services. Elena is the Rapporteur for the Benchmarks group of the EU Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance appointed by the European Commission.
Previously, Elena was Head of Company Content Management at Thomson Reuters, where she led the Global Investing and Advisory Content Management Team. Other previous roles at Thomson Reuters include Content Specialist Manager, Content Proposition Manager and Head Data Quality. Elena worked as Senior ESG Analyst at ASSET4, the ESG data provider acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2009, and started her career as Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley. Elena holds an MBA and BA in Finance and International business from Stetson University.
Shutting down the global economy in the age of Covid-19 was tough. Reopening is proving even harder. How should organizations continue operating in this new normal? What are best practices and lessons learned from past outbreaks including SARS, MERS, H1N1, H5N1, Zika, and Ebola, and other hazards. In this podcast, Chloe Demrovsky, President & CEO of the Disaster Recovery Institute, explores the ways in which professionals can better prepare for and respond to the next crisis. Disaster Recovery Institute is a leading global nonprofit that helps governments, Fortune 500 companies and financial and other institutions around the world prepare for and recover from disasters by providing education, accreditation, and thought leadership in business continuity, disaster recovery, cyber resilience and other areas.
Speaker BioChloe Demrovsky is the President and CEO of Disaster Recovery Institute International, the oldest and largest nonprofit that helps organizations around the world prepare for and recover from disasters by providing education, accreditation, and thought leadership in business continuity, disaster recovery, cyber resilience and related fields. Founded in 1988, DRI has certified 15,000+ resilience professionals in 100+ countries and at 95 percent of Fortune 100 companies. She previously served for three years as Executive Director during which time she led DRI to a record number of certified professionals with a 42% increase and oversaw the launch of a number of valuable initiatives including the DRI Online Library, the Collegiate Conference Program, the DRI Webinar Program, the Future Vision Thinktank, a new risk management training and certification program, the launch of DRI’s premier organizational certification, and the most substantive revision of DRI’s core training program in the history of the organization. During her tenure, DRI’s conference reached a record level of attendance and the organization launched a series of new committees dedicated to better serving the industry’s diverse needs including Women in Business Continuity, Young Leaders in Resilience, and the Veterans’ Outreach Program. She built the relationship with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, is a Board Director for the DRI Foundation, and a Certified Business Continuity Vendor (CBCV). She is a senior Forbes contributor, has authored numerous articles, appeared on Bloomberg TV, MSNBC and Fox, and has served as an expert source for The Associated Press, USA Today, LA Times, Conde Nast Traveler, ABC News, and more. She has presented at dozens of events across four continents and conducted on-site briefings for government officials, government bodies including the European Commission and international organizations as well as for visiting delegations. She is a Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities Subject Matter Advisor and served as an editor for the 2017 version of The Professional Practices for Business Continuity Management, the coordinator for the first International Glossary for Resiliency and the International Editor for Thrive International Blog and Thrive Iberoamerica, DRI’s Spanish-language publication.
Continuing our theme from the last episode of the COVID series, in this special episode of the Climate Risk Podcast Series, host and Co-president of the GARP Risk Institute, Jo Paisley, is again joined by John Scott, Head of Sustainability Risk for the Zurich Insurance Group. Having briefly touched on some of the interconnections that exist between climate change and the ongoing COIVID-19 crisis in the previous episode, John has kindly returned to talk in more depth about this timely subject.
The episode addresses three key questions:
If you have any questions, thoughts or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com
COVID-19 is having a dramatic impact on the nature of market, credit, financial, and operational risks facing companies. Information about these risks is evolving at a rapid pace. To help risk managers stay informed of the latest developments and address the challenges associated with COVID-19, GARP has launched a podcast series featuring lively discussions with thought leaders and experts.
This week we will be taking a look at the intersection between the COVID-19 crisis and risks around Climate Change. The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a lot of questions about the impact of the lockdowns on the environment, how quickly new behaviors can be adopted in a crisis and what lessons can be learned from our experience with COVID-19 that may be helpful as risk managers move to mitigate the expected consequences of Climate Change. In this episode, we speak with Naeem Siddiqi, Senior Advisor, Risk and Quantitative Solutions, SAS Institute Inc. and Peter Plochan, FRM, Principal Business Solutions Manager at SAS about what COVID-19 can teach companies about mitigating climate risk.
Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series.
About SASAs a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.
Speaker Bios
Peter Plochan, Principal Business Solutions Manager at SAS is a FRM certified Risk Management specialist with strong analytical mindset and finance background. He is combining 10+ years of Risk Management experience from ABN AMRO Bank, PWC, Atradius, GARP, PRMIA. Since 2014 he is with SAS as global acting domain expert leveraging the latest trends in AI and analytics with the deep risk management & finance expertise.
Naeem Siddiqi is the author of Credit Risk Scorecards (Wiley & Sons, 2005), and Intelligent Credit Scoring (Wiley & Sons, 2017), and has advised and trained bankers in over 20 countries on the art and science of credit scoring. Naeem has worked in retail credit risk management since 1992, both as a consultant and as a risk manager at financial institutions.
At SAS, Naeem played a key role in the development of products relating to credit scoring. He is currently responsible for advising customers on issues pertaining to credit scoring and decisioning, risk strategy, climate change risk, AI/ML in credit risk as well as modernizing analytics infrastructures. He continues to meet and advise C-level bankers in between 40-50 top lending institutions worldwide annually.
Naeem has an Honours Bachelor of Engineering from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of London, and an MBA from York University in Toronto.
Insurance plays such an important role in how we collectively navigate risk and many insurance firms are already used to dealing with the extreme weather events that are being made worse and more frequent by climate change. It is therefore important that the experience and insights found within the insurance sector are brought to bear on the pressing task of managing climate risk.
In this episode, host and Co-president of the GARP Risk Institute, Jo Paisley, is joined by John Scott, Head of Sustainability Risk for the Zurich Insurance Group. Through this conversation you will find specific insights into the nature of physical risk, as well as the ways in which insurance firms are positioned to guide effective action and investment towards both mitigation and adaptation efforts.
If you have any questions, thoughts or feedback regarding the Climate Risk podcast series, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com
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Speaker Bio:
John Scott is Head of Sustainability Risk for the Zurich Insurance Group. He joined Zurich in 2001 becoming Head of Risk Insight in 2007 and was Chief Risk Officer for Zurich’s Global Corporate and Commercial Insurance businesses from 2009 to 2017. He took on his current role in 2018. John leads the Group’s engagement on sustainability risk, both internally and externally as the way Zurich delivers its purpose and values.
For the last ten years, in his roles as CRO for Commercial Insurance and as Head of Sustainability Risk, John has increasingly focused on climate change as a risk that affects the insurance industry. His unique combination of previous roles and experiences in the oil & gas and chemicals industries, together with his involvement in many industry and Government organisations, has given him a deep understanding of the risks and opportunities that climate change presents to companies, governments and society at large.
John is a member of the Institute of Directors in the UK, is on the Advisory Board to the World Economic Forum Global Risks Report and has contributed to industry and Government policy on climate change and green finance, through many organisations. John’s expertise in sustainability risk and, in particular climate change risk, has made him a sought-after speaker at numerous international conferences.
The effects of COVID-19 spread to virtually every aspect of Hong Kong’s economy, impacting operational, credit and market risks at all types of businesses, including banks. Many companies, in fact, saw payments for goods from customers in the US and Europe grind to a complete halt. In response, the city’s central bank, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), enacted a series of measures to assist banks, small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individuals. In this podcast, Arthur Yuen, deputy CEO of HKMA, will address: • How the HKMA responded to the pandemic’s crippling economic impact; • Steps the HKMA and banks are taking to help SMEs and other severely-impacted industries; • The largest risk management challenges COVID-19 has presented; • The lessons learned from previous pandemics, like SARS; and • Measures the HKMA may enact to improve operational resilience in the financial system
We would like to thank our listeners for tuning in to our special subseries on COVID-19. We will be skipping this week due to the holidays, but will resume our weekly series on June 1st with an enlightening conversation with Arthur Yuen, Deputy CEO of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, on The Economic and Risk Impact of COVID-19: How Hong Kong is Fighting the Pandemic. We hope everyone has a good and safe holiday, and we look forward to seeing you next week.
The current pandemic is having an enormous impact on the leveraged loan markets which until recently were priced to perfection. Bid-Ask spreads have widened dramatically, and leveraged loan indexes have fallen substantially. One of the biggest areas of concern is over collateralization of CLOs, particularly in the US. We would like to invite you to share your insights into these challenges facing the leveraged loan market and risks facing banks, asset managers and investors.
GARP is happy to partner once again with SAS on this episode, which features, David Phillips, CFA, ASA, EA, a Director, Liability Driven Investment Strategies at Parametric, John McMurray, CPA, CFA, the Chief Risk Officer & Chief Audit Executive at Russell Investments, and Stas Melnikov, CFA, FRM – Head of Risk Product Portfolio and Strategy at SAS.
Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series.
About SAS
As a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.
For more resources from SAS - click here.
Bios of our Guests
John McMurray is chief risk officer and chief audit executive at Russell Investments. He has over 35 years of experience in financial services on both the buy and sell sides in asset managers and banks.
David Phillips has spent almost 30 years in the pension industry advising plan sponsors on strategic allocation and risk, particularly LDI, and overseeing global pension investments for a Fortune 500 plan sponsor.
Stas Melnikov, CFA, FRM, is head of risk product portfolio and strategy at SAS. Prior to SAS, Stas was head of market and liquidity risk at Russell Investments and head of residential credit loss forecasting at JPMorgan Chase.
To help risk managers stay informed of the latest developments and address the challenges associated with COVID-19, GARP has launched a podcast series featuring lively discussions with thought leaders and experts.
The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic – including crashing stock markets, plummeting oil prices and soaring unemployment – has resulted in significant credit issues at financial institutions across the globe. All of the uncertainty has not only raised questions about bank capitalization and stability but also forced firms to adjust their credit risk models and assumptions. In this GARP podcast episode, Cris deRitis, Deputy Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics, will discuss how the pandemic is effecting credit risk modeling, Current Expected Credit Loss regulation and stress testing in the US and Europe.
COVID-19 is having a dramatic impact on the nature of market, credit, financial, and operational risks facing companies. Information about these risks is evolving at a rapid pace. To help risk managers stay informed of the latest developments and address the challenges associated with COVID-19, GARP has launched a podcast series featuring lively discussions with thought leaders and experts.
In a suddenly volatile economy, spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, and despite government interventions, bankruptcies and increased defaults will more than likely increase. With new and immature data, produced by this unexpected economic downturn, automated modeling processes will help enhance efficiencies, but data issues will require human judgment for model development. Join Naeem Siddiqi, Senior Advisor in the Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions, SAS and Jerome Caron, Specialist of Analytics Solutions, SAS to take a look at strategic approaches to a calculating Credit Risk in the context of COVID-19.
For a related resource on this subject - click here.
Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series.
About SASAs a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.
COVID-19 is having a dramatic impact on the nature of market, credit, financial, and operational risks facing companies. Information about these risks is evolving at a rapid pace. To help risk managers stay informed of the latest developments and address the challenges associated with COVID-19, GARP has launched a podcast series featuring lively discussions with thought leaders and experts.
Our first interview is with Ed Amoroso, currently Chief Executive Officer of TAG Cyber LLC, a global cyber security advisory, training, consulting, and media services company supporting hundreds of companies across the world. Ed recently retired from AT&T after thirty-one years of service in the cybersecurity space.
In recent years, financial institutions have proven to be vulnerable to cyberattacks, leaving risk teams scrambling. With more work pushed online than ever before due to COVID-19 – and hackers finding new ways to exploit networks - understanding new and evolving cyber risks is even more critical today. How can cyber risk and risk management in general keep up with the sophistication and scale of potential attacks against company systems in a work environment that has already been disrupted? What role do CROs and risk managers play in this battle and what role do cybersecurity professionals play in risk management in the future.
To access our full library of COVID-19 content click here.
Dr. Ed Amoroso is currently Chief Executive Officer of TAG Cyber LLC, a global cyber security advisory, training, consulting, and media services company supporting hundreds of companies across the world. Ed recently retired from AT&T after thirty-one years of service, beginning in Unix security R&D at Bell Labs and culminating as Senior Vice President and Chief Security Officer of AT&T from 2004 to 2016.
Ed has been Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the Stevens Institute of Technology for the past twenty-seven years, where he has introduced nearly two thousand graduate students to the topic of information security. He is also affiliated with the Tandon School of Engineering at NYU as a Research Professor, and the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University as a senior advisor. He is author of six books on cyber security and dozens of major research and technical papers and articles in peer-reviewed and major publications.
Ed holds the BS degree in physics from Dickinson College, the MS/PhD degrees in Computer Science from the Stevens Institute of Technology, and is a graduate of the Columbia Business School. He holds ten patents in the area of cyber security and media technology and he has served as a Member of the Board of Directors for M&T Bank, as well as on the NSA Advisory Board (NSAAB). Ed’s work has been highlighted on CNN, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has worked directly with four Presidential administrations on issues related to national security, critical infrastructure protection, and cyber policy.
Welcome back to GARP’s Climate Risk Podcast Series. Through the course of this series we will be bringing you insights from those working at the cutting edge of climate change. We will be joined by regulators, business leaders and risk practitioners who will help us build up a holistic view of the risks and opportunities that climate change poses and explore how this might affect you in your day to day work.
In this episode, host and Co-president of the GARP Risk Institute, Jo Paisley, is joined by Betsy Nelson, recently retired CRO at the EBRD. Here at GARP, we have been emphasising the importance of placing the risks associated with climate change in the broader context of sustainability, which is why we think the perspective of a development bank is such an important one.
Through this episode, you will gain insights into:
Speaker Bio:
Former Vice President Risk and Chief Risk Officer of EBRD (European Bank of Reconstruction and Development)
Betsy Nelson became the EBRD's Vice President Risk and Compliance and Chief Risk Officer in November 2016 and served in that role until December 2019. She had been previously Vice President of Risk. She was a member of the Bank's Executive Committee.
Ms Nelson joined the EBRD in March 2012 as Vice President of the then combined Risk and Resources (Human Resources, Administrative Services and IT) and has extensive experience in the financial sector.
For the three years prior to joining the EBRD, she was the Head of Credit Department in the Risk Specialists Division of the Financial Services Authority (FSA, now PRA) in the United Kingdom, where she built the Authority’s first Credit Department with a team of wholesale, retail, structured finance and Basel credit model experts.
Before this she had a career spanning 30 years at JPMorgan Chase. She has worked most of her career in Europe and the UK. In her last 10 years at JPMorgan Chase, she held a number of senior management positions, including Head of Corporate Banking and Head of Client Credit Management, both for the EMEA region.
Welcome to the first episode of GARP Podcasts Climate Risk Series. Through the course of this series we will be bringing you insights from those working at the cutting edge of climate change. We will be joined by regulators, business leaders and risk practitioners who will help us build up a holistic view of the risks and opportunities that climate change poses and explore how this might affect you in your day to day work.
In today’s show, host and Co-president of the GARP Risk Institute, Jo Paisley, is joined by Michael Sheren, Senior Adviser at the Bank of England, to discuss three foundational questions:
A new report from the Financial Reporting Lab of the UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC) reveals that companies are falling short of investors’ expectations for clearer reporting on climate-related issues. It notes that while reporting on climate change is an evolving practice, investor expectations are changing rapidly.
The Financial Reporting Lab of the UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC) recently released a report that reveals companies may be falling short of investors’ expectations for clear reporting on climate-related issues. In this episode, GARP Risk Institute Co-President Jo Paisley speaks with Phil Fitz-Gerald, Director of the FRC's Financial Reporting Lab about the key findings of their report, what best practices are emerging around climate related corporate reporting, and how reporting can change behavior. You can download the report here: Climate-related corporate reporting – Where to next?
In this episode, GARP Executive Editor, Robert Sales, speaks with Brenda Boultwood, a former CRO and a current Risk Advisory Partner at Deloitte, about the core components of a well understood risk management program, including: framework, policy, taxonomy, methodology and reporting.
How can a company develop these integral risk management building blocks, and how do they fit together?
Click here to read Brenda’s CRO Outlook column on GARP’s Risk Intelligence.
According to a new report from BCS Consulting, more than a third of the world’s top 75 banks have still not declared their support for the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), an initiative to get companies to disclose clear comparable and consistent information about the risks and opportunities presented by climate change.
In this episode, GARP Risk Institute Co-President Jo Paisley speaks with Hector Fontaine, Sustainable Finance Lead at BCS Consulting about the key findings of the report, what best practices are emerging around climate risk, and how this could conceivably impact future regulation.
For the GARP Risk Institute’s Global Survey on Climate Risk Management for Financial Firms, please see: https://www.garp.org/#!/garp-risk-institute/climate-risk-management-survey
On this episode we are so pleased to welcome:
Moderated by GARP’s own Michael Sell.
We wanted to thank Stacy Montagner and Anna Aster from the Heidrick team for giving us the idea for today’s discussion around the Next Generation of Risk leadership and for providing us with such a dynamic panel of speakers.
GARP's new podcast with SAS, The New Age of Risk Analytics, features an episode focusing on the new insurance accounting standard, IFRS 17, which may have broader implications for risk managers - whether you are in insurance or not - than might be realized.
David Anderson, Advisory Director, Risk Consulting at KPMG US and Bryce Ehrhardt, Director, Accounting Advisory Services at KPMG US discuss the standard and its implications and value-add opportunities.
The information contained herein is of a general nature and is not intended to address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Although we endeavor to provide accurate and timely information, there can be no guarantee that such information is accurate as of the date it is received or that it will continue to be accurate in the future. No one should act upon such information without appropriate professional advice after a thorough examination of the particular situation.
Sweeping changes to regulations and accounting standards, breakneck advances in technology and the emergence of innovative competitors are upending the traditional business model. To adapt to this new environment, risk and finance infrastructures must evolve. Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk. This time, we are partnering on a brand new podcast, The New Age of Risk Analytics to take a closer look at ways to compete in this new environment.
CLICK HERE to subscribe.
GARP is pleased to present the inaugural episode of this spinoff podcast, Operationalizing AI and Risk.
The deployment of AI has been a hot topic in almost all business sectors in recent years - and this is no different for risk professionals. In the financial services industry, especially for regulated activities, how to effectively use AI technologies has been a real question. In December of 2018, GARP and SAS surveyed more than 2,500 risk professionals to see where they stand in their understanding of Artificial Intelligence and their current usages and challenges.
For our first episode of this podcast, DeLisa M. White, GARP’s Multimedia Content Producer and your host, spoke with John Sjaastad, Senior Director of Global Risk Consulting, SAS, about these survey results, what challenges risk professionals face when it comes to using AI to its full potential, why you can’t stop learning and how AI can help your own career. Visit www.sas.com/risksurvey to download the report discussed here today.
As a cyber risk management adviser to public- and private-sector organizations, Coalfire has a firsthand perspective on information security challenges, how they are evolving, and best practices for compliance and controls. CEO Tom McAndrew discusses the current threat environment; security implications of new technologies such as the cloud; and what the Coalfire Penetration Risk Report says about how cybersecurity performance varies across industry sectors and by size of organization.
Let's listen in.
Risk managers’ role “involves two related but fundamentally different tasks,” David M. Rowe writes in An Insider’s Guide to Risk Management. Rowe expounds on these tasks – avoiding a “death of a thousand cuts” in normal market conditions, and protecting firms from the potentially lethal impact of catastrophic events – with insights from a 40-plus year career in economic forecasting and risk management, and in the context of “Relearning the Lessons of the Global Financial Crisis,” which is his book’s subtitle. Ground covered in our podcast interview includes risk culture, systemic risk, and regulatory and technological change.
In 2015, Paxos (then known as itBit) became the first firm active in the emerging digital asset and blockchain business to obtain a New York State trust company charter. Recent milestones include the launch of the Paxos Standard “digital dollar” token and INTL FCStone’s adoption of the Paxos Confirmation Service in the precious metals market.
In this podcast, co-founder and CEO Charles Cascarilla recalls how his early exposure to Bitcoin helped to identify the underlying blockchain’s business potential. He discusses the advantages of being regulated and the progress Paxos has made on its mission to modernize post-trade processes and eliminate settlement risk.
Christine Todd Whitman, former Governor of the State of New Jersey and former Administrator of the EPA (2001-2003), shared her perspectives about creating common ground in communicating climate risks.
“We are making gestures that seem to be industry friendly, but are we all–industry included–going to pay a very high price for the consequences,” Governor Whitman said. She added that environmental protection and economic growth is “not a zero-sum game.”
Listen to Whitman’s perspectives on climate risks and her concerns that short term actions will have long-term negative consequences.
At Citibank, David X Martin (http://davidxmartin.com/) developed one of the first comprehensive enterprise risk management processes. While with AllianceBernstein, he was the founding chairman of the Investment Company Institute’s Risk Committee. Drawing on his lengthy career as a risk management executive, consultant/adviser, author and educator, Martin reflects on the state of the risk profession, changes in the risk landscape, and his current work on cyber risk and board governance as managing partner of cybX.
Fully in effect as of May 25, 2018, the far-reaching data security and privacy provisions of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation are no longer hypothetical for risk managers and compliance officers. In this podcast, Information Security Forum managing director Steve Durbin discusses the corporate world’s state of preparedness as it approaches the ongoing financial, operational and reputational challenges.
Fabio Natalucci, Deputy Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department at the International Monetary Fund, discusses the April 2018 Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR). A bumpy road ahead could put growth at risk in the medium term, both because short-term financial-stability risks have increased, and because financial vulnerabilities have built up over the years. Natalucci discusses concerns that central banks may abruptly shift monetary policies by quickly raising rates, the ways in which financial markets have benefited from central bank communication, and the increasing challenges faced by policymakers.
Jeh Johnson, former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, speaks with Jeremy Davis, VP, Media and Event Producer, GARP about the new age of risk. The risk landscape that we now face is one in which emerging and non-traditional risks intersect to create exponentially complex threats to global stability. That’s where Secretary Jeh Johnson comes in, as he has built his career managing the most complex risks to global security and stability.
Secretary Johnson served as the fourth United States Secretary of Homeland Security (2013-2017). He was General Counsel of the Department of Defense (2009-2012). He is a partner in the Litigation Department at Paul. Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. Secretary Johnson was a keynote presenter at GARP’s Risk Convention on March 6-7, 2018.
From new fraud-detecting technologies to the ways in which Google disrupts innovation in the financial sector, the FinTech revolution has completely transformed the face of risk management. On Monday, March 5, join Michael B. Imerman for a day-long Master Class on Managing Systemic FinTech and Disruptive Innovation Risks. Listen to Imerman’s introduction to the Master Class now to learn more about the topics that will be covered throughout the class.
In this episode, Steve Beattie, Principal and Global Financial Crime Operations and Advisory Leader at EY, joins GARP Editor in Chief Jeff Kutler for a discussion about financial crime and the industry response to it. Beattie shares his professional insights on the state of regulation, compliance and law enforcement—particularly as it affects the financial services industry—and on solutions to the challenges that private sector firms are currently facing in this area.
Steve Durbin, Managing Director of the Information Security Forum (ISF), talks to GARP Editor-in-Chief Jeff Kutler about ISF’s 2018 Global Security Threat Outlook. The discussion covers some of its key findings in the areas of crime-as-a-service (CaaS), Internet of Things (IoT), supply chain exposures, regulatory complexity, and board-of-director expectations and governance.
Mark Watson, Executive Director in EY’s Financial Services Organization (FSO) advisory practice, joins GARP’s Jeff Kutler to discuss the 8th annual EY/Institute of International Finance (IIF) global bank risk management survey, “Restore, rationalize and reinvent: A fundamental shift in the way banks manage risk.” The survey follows the industry’s progress in improving risk management by surveying senior risk executives. This year, 77 banks from 35 countries participated in the survey, including 20 institutions described as “global systematically important banks” (G-SIBs). The discussion touches on key prioritizations of risk, including cybersecurity, data integrity, disruptive technologies, regulatory issues, business models, conduct, board governance, and geopolitical and social issues, as well as the importance of talent recruitment and developing careers in risk.
In the first installment of this series, Jeremy Davis (Vice President, Media and Events, GARP) speaks to Mary Schapiro (29th Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission) about her work with the Financial Stability Board’s task force.
This series will explore the future of risk and risk management in various sectors across the industry. This episode explores Schapiro’s work with the task force on climate-related financial disclosures.
For further information, you can go to the TCFD website .
Jack Tomarchio (former Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, Department of Homeland Security) shares his invaluable insights into the recent political hacks and teaches the crowd how to think like an intelligence officer.
Tomarchio has served as the senior official in charge of the Intelligence Directorate's intelligence sharing network, and as an advisor on business processes for defense, homeland security, cybersecurity and intelligence fields. He speaks about the best ways to approach proactive geopolitical risk management, discusses the motivation and perceived responses to the hacks, and shares an unclassified threat briefing.
Candice Nonas (Managing Consultant, Resources Global Professionals) moderates a panel of professionals from Deutsche Bank, Ernst & Young, and more about the current state of the risk field.
Our global chapter network is a core benefit of our community. The regional chapters bring together panels of experienced risk professionals to provide insight into the current state of the economy, and how it impacts the trends and opportunities for careers in risk management. These events are especially helpful for those looking to advance their careers in the risk management profession.
This discussion features the following panelists:
John Carlin (Chair, Global Risk and Crisis Management, Morrison & Foerster; former Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s National Security Division) discusses enterprise-wide approaches to managing cyber risk.
The complex cybersecurity landscape has redefined how senior management and boards of directors approach cyber risk management. Risk managers, CROs, CISOs, and CSOs need to be able to communicate information security challenges using language that effectively engages senior management across silos.
This talk was part of our Cyber Risk Management as a Boardroom Imperative event, which brought together former government officials and experts from diverse cybersecurity backgrounds to provide insightful information on the greatest cyber challenges facing today’s risk managers.
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