Risk Models From Governance to Validation: Part 1. Don’t Forget the Story
The best practices of risk models–and model building–boil down to one thing: “we can’t forget the story behind it,” said Peter Went, VP, Banking Risk Management Programs at GARP. He was the first of three speakers at a GARP webinar on risk models held June 11, 2013. “There must always be a qualitative story expressible in quantitative terms.” And, vice versa, since any model reduces the complexities of the real world into snippets of mathematical relationships, the opposite must hold true. Went, a trained econometrist, described three main types of models. Fundamental models are based on rules relating basic variables […]
The Fed, Foreign Banks and Basel III: Part 2. Capital Concerns
“Some of the rules are in direct conflict,” said Peter Went, VP, Banking Risk Management Programs, GARP. He was the second speaker at a webinar presented on February 14, 2013 organized by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) regarding regulatory reform of foreign banking operations (FBOs) in the United States and the implementation of the Basel III framework. The “conflict” refers to rules in the Dodd-Frank Act versus the globally agreed Basel III Accord’s guidelines. Both regulatory attempts apply the G-20 principles on financial regulation (Pittsburgh 2009 summit). The US implementation of the Basel III framework differs from the […]
Zombie Banks Part 1. Tough Love
George A. Romero, the moviemaker who popularized the witchcraft legend of the “walking undead,” would likely be astonished to hear the term applied to real financial institutions, but “Zombie banks” does capture the concept well. On June 5, 2012, Yalman Onaran, author of “Zombie Banks: How Broken Banks and Debtor Nations Are Crippling the Global Economy,” and financial reporter at Bloomberg News, spoke at a panel convened by GARP (Global Association of Risk Professionals) to discuss the phenomenon of banks which exist to fulfill a regulatory purpose but are not in themselves economically viable. Onaran said the first response to […]
Reality vs Expectations: What Risk Managers Can Learn from the NFL
Arriving a little late at the CFA Society Toronto luncheon on June 4, 2012 at the National Club on Bay Street, I had a lucky choice of seat at the “hodge podge” table near the back. My two nearest neighbours at the table had driven from Simcoe to Toronto that morning (a minimum two-hour trip) for the express purpose of meeting the featured speaker, Roger Martin, Dean of Rotman School of Management. One said he had not only read and enjoyed Martin’s latest book, Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL, he had also […]
Uncontrolled Risk
Uncontrolled Risk: The Lessons of Lehman Brothers and How Systemic Risk Can Still Bring Down the World Financial System by Mark T. Williams 220 pp., not including 27 pp of Appendix, Notes, and Index (Reprinted from The Analyst, March 2011 issue.) On September 15, 2008, the 158-year-old investment bank, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy, thereby unleashing a horde of systemic risk effects that continue to bedevil the financial system. In this recently-published investigation into how the collapse of one iconic institution contaminated an entire sector, Mark T. Williams draws some sobering lessons. In the 1990s, author Mark T. Williams worked […]