PRMIA Zurich

Leveraging Foresight and Emerging Risk Management for Business

PRMIA would like to thank Bernd Wilke and Iordanis Chatziprodromou for their insightful presentations and lively discussion at our recent event. We would also like to thank Swiss Re for making the event possible. The presentation from Bernd Wilke can be found below.

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PRMIA Event, June 27, 2012

PRMIA Zurich would like to thank Catherine Brown and Florian Herzog for their presentations, which both entertaining and relevant. Florian Herzog has made his presentation available for download. The link can be found below:

http://www.ccfz.ch/files/swissquant.pdf

For inquiries regarding Catherine Brown's presentation, please call Oliver Wyman at +44 20 7333 8333.

Swiss Solvency Test

PRMIA Zurich would like to thank René Schnieper and Hansjörg Furrer for their presentations on February 28th, which were held in front of a record audience. Both have agreed to make their presentations available online. They can be found in the links below.

Rene Schnieper

Hansjoerg Furrer

PRMIA Global Risk Conference

The PRMIA Global Risk Conference, scheduled for May 14—16, 2012, in New York City, is shaping up as the “can’t miss” professional conference of the year! Sessions and speakers are coming together to provide a truly inspiring agenda.

In addition to its global perspective and impact, the conference will focus on a plethora of issues vital to today's complex and uncertain environment. Sectors which will receive special focus include Banking, Asset Management, Energy and Diverse Industries.

Areas of focus which front-line practitioners will discuss and debate include:

· Regulatory environment
· Behavioral risk
· Risk/return dynamics
· Capital management
· Modeling
· Information technology
· Climate, sustainability and alternative energy
· Market risk
· Credit risk
· Liquidity risk
· Stress-testing

The conference will provide you with the opportunity to attend a full day of seminars focused on global topics, technical skills, practical experience and the latest theory in selected risk management disciplines. You will also experience two full days of general and concurrent sessions, including keynote presentations and panel discussions, a Gala Dinner and useful exhibits. Watch for the many opportunities to meet and exchange ideas and experiences as well, with PRMIA and non-PRMIA risk professionals from around the world. Don't risk missing this inaugural conference.

Visit www.prmia.org/globalriskconference for more information on the event. Registration will open in early January. We'll see you in May!

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From Stress Scenarios to Stressed Insurers and Pension Schemes: Risk Management Challenges in Insurance and Pensions

PRMIA Zurich would like to thank Dr. Ken Nyholm and Dr. Hans Peter Würmli for their engaging talks on Thursday November 3rd. For those of you who were not able to attend, the speakers have been kind enough to provide copies of the presentations to be made available online. The copies can be found in the links below.

Dr. Ken Nyholm: Consistent generation of stress scenarios – normative and practical considerations
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Dr. Hans Peter Würmli: Stressed insurers and pension schemes
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Best regards,
PRMIA Zurich Steering Committee

Alternative Investments post 2008- Presentations Available

PRMIA Zurich would like to thank Louis-Frederic de Pfyffer and Sona Blessing for their contibutions to the event "Alternative Investments post 2008: a New Paradigm" on September 27th. They have been gracious enough to make copies of their presentations available for download:

Louis-Frederic de Pfyffer: How to invest and manage risk in the Hedge Fund space post 2008
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Sona Blessing: Alternative Alternatives
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Stress Testing from the Practitioner Perspective: Experiences from the Trenches

PRMIA Zurich would like to thank the speakers of this recent event for their contributions. The speakers have kindly allowed their presentations to be available to the PRMIA community. The links are provided below.

Dr. Roland Goetschmann, Head Aggregate Risks and Scenario Analysis, Banks, Finma: Stress testing from a supervisory perspective
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Dr. Joerg Behrens, Managing Partner Fintegral A.G. and Dr. Leif Boegelein, Partner Fintegral A.G.: From theory to practice – project experience on designing and implementing a comprehensive stress testing framework for a universal bank
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Dr. Enrico Piotto, Managing Director, Group Stress Testing & Model Governance, UBS: Combined stress testing of a firm-wide portfolio and comprehensive capture of risks
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Post-graduate CAS (Certificate of Advanced Studies) program in risk management

To navigate uncertainty, complexity and change, risk professionals must have a broad knowledge in the many areas of risk management. In that light,starting Fall 2010, the Swiss Banking Institute (ISB) offers a post-graduate CAS (Certificate of Advanced Studies) program in risk management following the highest quality standards set out by the Professional Risk Managers' International Association (PRMIA).

The aim of the program is twofold: providing the most advanced education in Risk Management on PRMIA standards, and to prepare its graduates to get the Professional Risk Manager (PRM) designation.

The PRM is not only a leading certification for risk managers but also a benchmark against which the best risk professionals measure their skills.

The CAS curriculum covers basic material for the first three of four exams needed to pass for getting the PRM designation. Successful candidates get the CAS.

The course will be taught by leading industry and academic professionals from both the University of Zurich and the ETH Zurich. Lectures will take place on Friday afternoon (14.00 - 18.00) and Saturday all day (9.00 - 18.00).

The CAS program aims at risk professionals, or those who interface with risk management disciplines on a very regular basis, who want to improve and expand their knowledge in risk management. Candidates are being tested in all areas of risk management for the required broad knowledge and understanding that risk managers must bring to the job.

The deadline for applying to the program is August 27. More information:

http://www.finance-weiterbildung.uzh.ch/themen/riskmgt

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For further information please contact:

Prof. Dr. Erich Walter Farkas
farkas@isb.uzh.ch
Program Director CAS in Risk Management
Co-Regional Director PRMIA Zurich

Swiss Banking Institute, University of Zurich
Plattenstrasse 14,
8032 Zurich, Switzerland
Tel. +41-44-634-3953

The PRMIA Zurich Steering Committee has adopted the following By-laws, in effect as of 30.7.10.

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PRMIA Zurich Event on 15.4.2010

PRMIA would like to thank the speakers, Tobias Guldimann, CRO of Credit Suisse, and Raj Singh, CRO of Swiss Re, for providing their insights as the main speakers at our event on April 15. We would also like to thank them for making their presentations available to PRMIA members. You can find the links below.

]]> Tobias Guldimann - Credit Suisse:
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Raj Singh - Swiss Re:
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PRMIA welcomes Dr. Pieter Klaassen to the Zurich Steering Committee

PRMIA would like to extend a warm welcome to Dr. Pieter Klaassen, who recently was elected into the Steering Committee of the Zurich chapter. Dr. Klaassen brings with him impressive experience and enthusiasm for risk management, and we are very convinced that he will contribute significantly to expanding the prominence of PRMIA in the Zurich area. Dr. Klaassen currently serves as Managing Director, Firm-Wide Risk Aggregation for UBS A.G. Prior to joining UBS, Dr. Klaassen held senior management positions at ABN AMRO and Rabobank, as well as research positions at Vrije Universiteit and Erasmus University. Dr. Klaassen holds a PhD in operations research from the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, where he wrote his thesis on stochastic programming models for interest rate management, and a master’s degree in econometrics from Erasmus University. He is co-author of the recently published book: Economic Capital: How it Works and What Every Manager Needs to Know (with Idzard van Eeghen), Elsevier Finance, 2009.

PRMIA Appoints Sandro Schmid and Walter Farkas as Co-Regional Directors for PRMIA Zurich

PRMIA announces today the appointment of Sandro Schmid and Walter Farkas as Co-Regional Directors for the PRMIA Zurich Chapter. Mr. Schmid is a Partner at Deloitte Switzerland heading the Risk & Performance Management unit. Prior to this role he was heading the management accounting for a large international Bank where he was also a branch manager. Sandro specializes in assisting clients in transforming their risk- and performance management with a particular emphasis on strategy, diagnostic, design, governance and also methodology. He is a business economist and holds an MBA from the University of Queensland, a MAS in international Management (University of a. Science Zurich), and the FRM by Fame. Further, he is also a lecturer for risk- and performance management for Swiss Universities.

Dr. Walter Farkas is a Professor for Quantitative Finance. He is currently lecturing at both University of Zurich and at ETH Zurich heading their joint specialized program “Master of Science in Quantitative Finance”. For the two universities Walter is seeking for a close cooperation with national and international research centers, as well as with industry and private companies in the area of Risk Management.

Walter leads several events on Risk Management in Zurich (among them the yearly ETH Risk Day) contributing to the intensification of the dialogue between academia and practitioners. His role as a researcher, lecturer and consultant (currently he serves also as an Advisor for the Quantitative Risk Management group of Deloitte Zurich) in the field of quantitative finance allows him to actively participate in the development of the field.

PRMIA Zurich aims to be the leading professional association of risk managers in Switzerland by offering education, events and technical information to enhance broadly the topic of risk management. They will encourage the exchange of ideas and best practices among risk management experts from both industry and academics. They will raise awareness for the Professional Risk Manager (PRM) designation in Switzerland and encourage and support professionals in reaching the PRM certification. They will do this by bringing together students from the MSc UZH ETH Quantitative Finance program with industry professionals in order to foster an exchange between industry and academics and to promote PRMIA and the PRM certification. They plan to set up an education platform at ETH and UZH which includes developing and maintaining a catalogue of existing UZH and ETH classes that are relevant for PRM exam preparation, both as a guide for people interested in the PRM certification and as a preparatory step towards possible accreditation of courses for the PRM exam exemption.

One of the main goals of the chapter will be to increase chapter membership and in addition the chapter C-Suite membership. They will achieve this by informing risk professionals through different channels about planned events and PRMIA offerings and as the chapter grows will work to recruit highly qualified risk experts to the steering committee.

PRMIA would like to acknowledge the Zurich Steering Committee that will help bring these goals to reality:
•Loannis Akkizidis, Financial Risk Analyst, FRS Global
•Jean-Pierre Colombara, CFO, Bank Heritage
•Dr. Pablo Koch, Head of Group Risk and Analytics, SwissRe
•Anton Seidel, Manager, Risk and Performance Management, Deloitte
•Manfred Plank, Managing Director, Head of Credit Risk Analytics & Instruments, Credit Suisse AG
•Karl Rappl, ex Director, UBS, moving to Swiss Regulator – FINMA, as Head of Quantitative Models for Large Banks Group

If you are interested in receiving information about the Zurich chapter including event invitations, please edit your profile to include the Zurich chapter. Steps to do this are:
•Login to your PRMIA user account
•Click the 'manage my profile' link underneath the welcome message
•Click the 'edit my profile' link
•In the chapter listings tick the box next to the Zurich chapter
•Scroll down and click the update button

PRMIA Member Gathering in Switzerland Well Received

On June 16th, the PRMIA Switzerland Provisional Steering Committee invited guest speaker Dr. David Rowe (EVP Risk Management at SunGard) to a talk about the lessons for risk management from the crisis. He talked about the need to complement quantitative tools with a structural analysis of unquantifiable and unnoticed risks. He noted that dangerous liquidity risks of financial instruments arise when these instruments lack accurate secondary valuation models. The event concluded with an apero, which was widely used both for further discussions with David Rowe and for learning more about PRMIA.

This event was the first public appearance of the soon to be formalized PRMIA chapter in Switzerland PRMIA is extremely appreciative of the resources provided by Deloitte for this event and the efforts contributed by the provisional steering committee.

Provisional steering committee members include Sandro Schmid (Deloitte), Prof. Dr. Walter Farkas (ETH Zurich and University of Zurich), Dr. Pablo Koch (SwissRe), Jean-Pierre Colombara (Bank Heritage) and Anton Seidel (Deloitte).