Recent SEC Enforcement
Given the trends that are emerging for enforcement by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), what’s a risk manager to do? “Risk managers should use data and data analytics to identify patterns,” said Steven Hilfer, Managing Director in the Disputes & Investigations practice, Capital Markets at Navigant. He was the fourth and final speaker in a four-part webinar panel titled “SEC 2018 Enforcement Trends” sponsored by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) on July 25, 2018. He argued that the SEC is plunging ahead in the area of data analytics, and it expects companies “to identify patterns prior to being […]
Supreme Court’s Impact
The U.S. Supreme Court will have a significant effect on the interpretation and enforcement of rules at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) , according to Thomas Zaccaro, Partner, Litigation Department, Paul Hastings LLP. He was the third speaker in a four-part webinar panel titled “SEC 2018 Enforcement Trends” sponsored by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) on July 25, 2018. “The disgorgement remedies are now limited to five years,” Zaccaro said. This is as a result of the Kokesh vs. SEC case. Disgorgement refers to the act of giving up something (such as profits illegally obtained). Previously the time […]
An Insider’s View
“Quite frankly, I think some have underestimated Clayton,” said Ken Joseph, Managing Director, Disputes and Investigations practice, at Duff & Phelps. “There is a de-emphasis on some areas and re-prioritization of other areas—but he is still focused on wrongdoing.” Joseph was referring to Jay Clayton, the recently appointed chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Ken Joseph was the second speaker in a four-part webinar panel titled “SEC 2018 Enforcement Trends” sponsored by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) on July 25, 2018. He is also former Head of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s New York Regional Office Investment […]
A New Landscape
Jay Clayton, the recently appointed chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under President Trump, has signaled new directions in the enforcement of securities laws. What are the implications for financial risk managers? “There is shift away from ‘broken windows’—trying the smallest cases—and there is no longer a requirement for companies to admit wrongdoing,” said Amy Poster, Managing Principal at Alpha Pacific Strategies. She was the moderator and opening speaker in a four-part webinar panel titled “SEC 2018 Enforcement Trends” sponsored by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) on July 25, 2018. The SEC appears to be changing its […]
A Tale of Two Funds
There are helpful and unhelpful models for determining risk-based profit attribution, according to Michael B. Miller, founder and CEO, Northstar Risk. This is part 2 of his explanation about how to attribute financial performance, given at a webinar sponsored by the Global Association of Risk Professionals on June 20, 2018. Miller gave an example of two funds. Fund A contains both long and short assets, is market neutral and generates positive alpha. Fund B is a macro fund that is market dependent and whose manager is correct 54 percent of the time. The returns of Funds A and B look very […]
Risk-Based Profit Attribution
“Even the best portfolio managers have bad years due to macroeconomic factors beyond their control,” said Michael B. Miller, founder and CEO, Northstar Risk, to an audience of financial risk professionals. This is Part 1 of his talk about how to attribute performance for financial management at a webinar sponsored by the Global Association of Risk Professionals on June 20, 2018. “We tend to view measurement of risk and performance as separate tasks, but performance can only be fully understood by taking risk into account,” Miller said. Performance is always evaluated relative to something else, such as “the market”—which commonly taken […]
Consolidated Audit Trail
The eighth anniversary of the 2010 flash crash on May 6, 2010, is approaching, Beau Alexander reminded the audience at the webinar organized by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP). Alexander is a Senior Sales Executive at FIS Global Trading, a publicly traded provider of financial services technology. The 2010 flash crash “was the second-largest intra-day swing in the stock market,” he said. That day the market lost two trillion dollars and then rebounded. “When you see volumes drop by 15 percent, there’s an activity that needs to be flushed out.” “Someone sitting in their parents’ basement had caused […]
Extracting Value from CECL 2
To meet the new for current expected credit losses (CECL) requirements, “you will need a lot of data,” said Thomas Caragher, Senior Product Manager of Financial & Risk Management Solutions at Fiserv, a US provider of financial services technology. Seven to ten years of data is not unreasonable. The payoff to massive data-gathering is that “you will be able to build strategy more effectively if you have information.” But what to do with the reams of data? First, you have to make some sense of it. “Start by correlating the data,” he said. Oil production might be correlated with loan demand […]
Extracting Value from CECL 1
“Turn the pain of compliance into the benefit of strategy,” said Thomas Caragher, Senior Product Manager of Financial & Risk Management Solutions at Fiserv, a US provider of financial services technology. He was speaking about the approaching deadline to implement new guidelines for current expected credit losses (CECL) at a webinar sponsored by the Global Association of Risk Professionals on April 11, 2018. CECL is the new impairment standard for credit impairment under the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Since it affects accounting, the effect of CECL will be felt “in department stores, cell phone companies, municipalities”—throughout the U.S. The purpose of business intelligence is […]
Behavioral Analytics 2
Industry leaders in the field of behavioral analysis (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon – FAMGA, as some call them) are “decision architects,” said Joe Mattey, Vice President of Enterprise Risk Analytics, and Chief Risk Officer at USAA. Typically a FAMGA product designer will put together a solution, such as a screen dialog, and fine-tune it over the course of many randomized, controlled trials, to see if the proposed solution gets the desired result—or whether some components need to be changed. In this way, behavioral analysis is looking not just at a decision outcome, it is looking at how that […]