I have been asked to do a detailed write-up on what does and does not constitute risk management.
There is a lot of confusion within the scholarly cum practitioner domain, as many topics are unjustly added or deleted from academic curriculums and workshop topical course outlines
Risk Management has a wide scope both within the financial services and non-financial services industry.
Especially, Risk as a subject has greatly benefited from the transfer of applicable and vocational knowledge outside the Insurance Field, over the years.
Risk as a profession, which was and continues to be dominated by Applied Statisticians, and Mathematicians, generally fitted well into the #Actuarial Domain, but, only until recently, when scholars from other non-related professions jumped into the market, offering afresh ideas.
These so-called "others category" that contributed to Risk Management, came from a wide list of practitioner professions and scholarly domains, primarily, due to the paucity of Actuarial Talent Supply, in the labour markets across the globe.
Quants, Financial Engineers, etc
How has the entrance of Non-Actuaries has helped or hurt the profession of traditional risk management, is a subject of another needed debate, which I believe will be discussed, as we move along!
But surely, the role of Non-Actuaries to fill gaps within RM is here to stay!
For e.g. in the asset management industry, there was no such thing as risk management during the 1970s.
Most of the work related to financial and strategic risks was managed by Accountants, Internal Control Experts, Auditors and Economists.
There was no distinct desk for RM!
The Evolution of Risk Management as a separate desk within the high powered money industry, on the Wall Street, can largely be attributed to the JP Morgan Executives which made use of the Summary Portfolio #VaR (Value-at-Risk) Metric.
Well, some might say that #BSOP Black Scholes Option Pricing Model played an instrumental role in developing #FRM Financial Risk Management as a specialized branch of skilled trades whose acumen was required by controllers in the financial business.
That is not entirely correct!
BSOP Model was used as an Option Pricing Model, which helped the Pit Arbitrageurs on the floor to speculate and trade contingency based claim prices as brokers and market makers on behalf of their clients.
Pricing and hedging are not the same concepts in MBA Vintage Pedagogy!
Infact Using BSOP model to hedge only became fashionable during the 1980s when quants were hired in large numbers by Fis in the City & on the Wall Street.
Name 1 book used in the 70s Finance class that taught delta-gamma-theta hedging using BSOP model.
I haven't come across any
BSOP became a contemporaneous part of the Risk Management Academic Toolkit, as more and more quantitative portfolio managers, traders, and brokers, began to refer to the VaR Model Metrics, as computed by Risk Desks, to earmark hedging done using the stop-loss levels.
Similarly, @BIS_org Basel1 Accord gave rise to a new paradigm outside of Insurance, whereby Risk, as a profession was propelled to compete with the other existing specialities, which had overlapping roles such as credit, audit, compliance, and internal control, etc at a bank.
well, whatever served as a catalyst to supplant the actuarial hand from the traditional risk management as it was done in the world of business, remains a controversial debate.
Was it VaR?
Was it @BIS_org guidelines?
Was it Option and other Derivative Securities Pricing?
But, I think we have strayed a bit, from the original hypothesis presented, that what should and should not be included within the domain of Risk Management as a subject at both the vocational and scholarly levels?
I think this needs further elaboration.
Risk as an academic discipline if approached from the realm of hard or physical science, must include three layers of pedagogy which shall lay down the basics of using a Common Body of knowledge
These include
1.Probability Theory 2. Mathematical Statistics 3. Stochastic Processes
Risk, if treated and taught as a professional and managerial vocational discipline, using transferable skill sets and knowledge to deal with the practical problems of the workplace, must include a CBOK which is based upon -> 1. Accounting 2. Auditing and Controls 3. ERM Standards
Anything besides, can always provide ancillary value addition to both the practitioner and the scholar in the field of Risk Management.
Some of these include Computing, Data Analytics, Informatics, Bayesian Statistics, Financial Engineering, Operations Research, Econometrics, etc
Kindly note ->
We are strictly discussing Risk Management Assignments and Practioner cum Scholarly Requirements, in a Non-Actuarial and/or Insurance Risk Management Context in this thread.
Two striking resemblances btw #SVB & former @CreditSuisse.
Both banks did not pay attention to the top 8–20 risks, which every board must.
Either these banks kept their risk desks understaffed or didn't hire key managerial position holders at all.
Why?
Need introspection now.
@CreditSuisse It was reported on this forum that #SVB did not have a CRO for some 8 months during the VC Market spiralling.
Also, I read just now that former @CreditSuisse was sacking key MDs in their across their risk desks.
This trend continued since the #Archegos fiasco surfaced after 2019
CRO Chief Risk Officer or Head of Risk Management is a key managerial decision-making position and C Suite Level role which every financial institution can afford to keep empty these days.
The Front, Middle, and Back Office roles form key lines of defence against top risks.
Russia and China were masterfully wedged by the Nixon Admin and Kissinger with the help of Pakistan, which was then led by Gen Yahya.
Now, history has brought the two Cold War Rivals closer.
This will create new Geopolitical, Geoeconomics and Geostrategic risks for the USA.
The biggest foreign policy and strategic failure of the USA has been that it didn't see the thaw between Iran and KSA coming
The entire Muslim world is now bifurcated into Russian & Chinese Camps
Hardly any Muslim nation will back America if a war breaks out between larger powers
Pakistan, the only Moslem Power with nuclear weapons, is the closest Chinese Ally not just in South Asia but the whole world.
It's akin to Italy under the Axis Power cosigned Pact of Steel or how Austro Hungarian Empire was buttressing the Kaiser.
BRI's epicentre is Gawadar.
Not every financial company should be structured as a bank, thereby accepting deposits, intermediating funds across markets, and reporting capital adequacy ratios using the @BIS guidelines.
This is the lesson I derive from the #SVBCollapse #SVBCrash
@Bis What is the point of pasting SVB CAR and Capital Ratio Metrics?
What sense could one derive from them before the run began?
They didn't reveal the full picture to the creditors, depositors, or shareholders.
CAR is a metric which exemplifies loss absorption capacity
Now?#SVBCrash
We need to revert to the Glass Steagall Act to understand economic history.
Why it was introduced in the aftermath of the Great Depression.
Why FDR and his team drew Chinese walls between Investment and Retail Banking institutions? federalreservehistory.org/essays/glass-s….
Yes, we have spoken a lot about public failure and the lessons we draw from the Socialist Bloc nations of Eastern Europe during the Cold War and the USSR as their patron-in-chief, which broke up due to state inefficiencies
We are not quick to pontificate about Market Failure #SVB
After GFC and several other frauds and financial failures within the private sector post-2008, it is time we hold corporate white-collar workers accountable for their misdeeds.
Yes, not everything is Fraud or portends to be a Financial Crime.
But, incompetence is a Moral Crime!
LTCM, Enron and WorldCom, GFC were only the tips of the iceberg.
American Corporate Management Standards have tremendously deteriorated due to a lack of professional ethics, or possibly due to a lack of competition.
When Japan & West Germany were competing, the Yanks did well.
Mutual funds do come with lock-in features! Especially if you are investing in a capital-protected product, you are not entitled to early encashment for a certain time.
Redemptions are deterred with the backend load. #Backstops are required in the banking arena beyond penalties
Of course, if you park liquidity in a time deposit liability side product, at a bank, you might have to pay a penalty for early withdrawal.
But, the highest liquidity risk is emanating from the sight deposits pool.
Run-on-the-bank risk is hard to mitigate if assets don't sell
Also, the standard practice is to call in the treasury department and borrow short-term through the interbank market to fund liquidity drains.
Call and Clean lending is done via the wholesale market for Fi credits.
Also, Repo markets can be used.
The #SVBCrash also further exposes the uselessness of the Basel 3 Accord and its modifications over the years
Why nobody is discussing the utter failure of @BIS_org which makes financial institutions invest billions in technology and staff recruitment, etc
We need answers
@BIS_org And the liquidity risk metrics reporting and filing which were introduced by @BIS_org under BASEL 3 were not fully implemented by the FED beyond certain large banks
But, still, certain aspects of Basel 3 were fully incorporated by the #SVB to make risk disclosures to the public.