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New Frontiers in Risk Management & Compliance

This blog will discuss the latest developments & spot futuristic trends that would impact the Risk Mgmt practices and skills.

7 pillars of US Financial Regulatory reform & the European Systemic Risk Council - The new blueprint

Risk & Compliance Managers, Private Equity(PE) firms, Hedge Funds, Credits firms and Consumers, in the USA and global financial markets are going to remember this week for a long time to come due to the epic changes in the financial regulation and supervision. I had blogged earlier about move to regulation from the light touch supervision. The latest US proposal on financial regulatory reform does skew towards tighter regulation.

In the EU summit starting today, a tighter financial market regulation is being discussed with 2 extra mandates for EBC - a European Systemic Risk Council and a body to set standards for closer supervision of banks, insurers and other firms. The European Systemic Risk Council, is proposed to be chaired by the European Central Bank president but will include central banks and the EU Commission representation to look at broader interlinked systemic risk issues.

The proposal is still evolving and subject to congress approval, but a quick summary of the 7 key areas and the possible impact on Regulatory Risk Management and compliance functions:

Continue reading "7 pillars of US Financial Regulatory reform & the European Systemic Risk Council - The new blueprint"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 03:14 PM | Comments (3)

How does one manage Risk in Bad banks ?

Recently we keep hearing new terms such as good bank, bad bank , toxic assets. Interesting times, as a bank and financial institution to me always denoted rock solid trustworthy entity.With many countries exploring bad banks concept in one way or the other, I wonder on the role that risk managers play in bad banks. Is it any different than the traditional role ?

Continue reading "How does one manage Risk in Bad banks ?"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 06:39 PM | Comments (0)

SEC tweets on twitter too - Digital Assets Risk Managment- Has its time come?

Digital Assets Risk Mgmt as a key management priority? US President's 10-point Cybersecurity Action plan

Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Secondlife - all start to become key component of the millenial generations activities at workplace and lifestyle. Its but natural that even regulatory bodies such as SEC and stock exchanges start to embrace twitter to boost their transparency and and outreach to the net savy investors.

Continue reading "SEC tweets on twitter too - Digital Assets Risk Managment- Has its time come?"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)

Should IT be the second line of defense for Operational Risk function?

As companies gear up to handle the ever increasing risk management and regulatory enviroment, a key aspect in recent times has been emergence of the Operational Risk and the role of IT in the implementation of the op risk initiatives.

Continue reading "Should IT be the second line of defense for Operational Risk function?"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 04:53 PM | Comments (2)

Liquidity Management - The future blueprint

With Liquidity management emerging as a key area of focus in the financial sector crisis, this article summarizes some of the key trends as to where the liquidity management practices are headed.
It summarizes regulatory and industry thinking i.e. BIS, CEBS and UK's FSA around liquidity management both pre and post systemic risk context.UK is probably going to be the first country off the block to implement significant changes to the new liquidty requirements with their aggressive timelines of Oct 2009.

I believe these will be epic changes in the one of the key pillars of risk management.

Continue reading "Liquidity Management - The future blueprint"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 11:11 PM | Comments (2)

Regulatory Oversight & Risk Mgmt impact - The way ahead !

The ongoing global credit crisis and the systemic risk tsunami is definitely leading to an overhaul of the regulatory frameworks around the world.

It remains to be seen if the pendulum will swing from the much touted Supervisory mode back to Regulation mode. It’s a devil and deep sea choice between light touch and heavy handedness. This article highlights some of the trends that I observe around the world around Regulatory oversight and possible impact for Risk management principles.

Continue reading "Regulatory Oversight & Risk Mgmt impact - The way ahead !"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)

GRM- Global Risk Mgmt and Governments Risk Mgmt with a $5 trillion plus kitty

Wishing everyone a happy and safe new year!

2008 was a humbling and disruptive year for the Financial sector, specially the bulge bracket Investment Banks as well as Risk Management profession on the whole. Many epitaphs will be written for legendary institutions that disappeared overnight and will be spoken about for decades to come in terms of the crunching global impact and the associated learnings. About $650bn of sub-prime bonds outstanding in March 2008, about 75% of them being rated triple A at issuance, and banks raised around $600 billion in 2008 worldwide to survive. This blog sets the context to a global development with wider and long term implications for the Risk Management role and function of the Governments and Sovereign Wealth funds.

GRM - Global Risk Management or Governments Risk Management
With FDIC chair floating the Aggregator bank idea this morning, there is a fascinating convergence of free markets and role of Governments as Risk Managers of last resort. There is an ongoing global risk management effort that although coordinated in some parts (e.g. G7, EU) and disparate in other parts of the world, does show signs of an orchestrated and coordinated effort. The different measures listed below really being the tactical components of a broader and longer term Governments Risk Management effort to rescue firms and economies -
1.Unprecedented direct intervention by Govt. bodies and regulators like FDIC in overnight in takeover/shotgun sales of financial institutions
2.Unprecedented but time bound Governments pledge to guarantee all loans and deposits
3.Bailouts plans such as US TARP
4.Stimulus packages
5.Benchmark rates cut
6.Assumption of toxic securities
7.Equity stake and nationalization in extreme cases
8.Interbank and debt guarantees
9.Recapitalization
10.Asset Restructuring body/Aggregator bank

Continue reading "GRM- Global Risk Mgmt and Governments Risk Mgmt with a $5 trillion plus kitty"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 05:26 PM | Comments (2)

Managing the $6 trillion systemic risk at the global iconic legends - Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac

Fannie Mae (The Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac(The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) - the twin iconic GSE (Govt. sponsored enterprises) institutions that own or guarantee more than $5-6 trillion of the total 12 trillion mortgages have always been the legendary pillars of the US mortgage industry but their span of influence and prestige spread much wider across the entire financial markets around the world.

For sometime now, both the mortgage icons have been under tremendous pressure due to the sub prime, mortgage and housing crisis in the US market. Although they guarantee or own only half of the mortgage market, because the subprime mortgage crisis has caused almost all other lending sources to pull out of the market, they are responsible for more than 80% of new mortgages being made in 2008.

There was fervent hope from many informed quarters that these prestigious GSE's would somehow weather the perfect storm and lend the much needed stability to the mortgage market. More so as many U.S. banks as well as foreign governments own stock or debt in the two giants, implying gigantic proportion of the systemic risk beyond the US housing market.

But this week a new chapter in managing the gigantic systemic risk will be written via the US Treasury, Fed Reserve and the Federal Housing Finance Agency(FHFA) coordinated intervention at these 2 iconic firms. As of yesterday Sept 7th 2008, both firms are now under conservatorship of the FHFA.

Continue reading "Managing the $6 trillion systemic risk at the global iconic legends - Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 04:31 AM | Comments (0)

Basel II Cross border realties - EU's CEBS releases range of practices

As the Basel II journey continues world over, the European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) recently released a range of practices on Basel II implementation issues.

I found this paper very informative and interesting and highly recommend to anyone interested in the practical realities of Basel II implementations across borders.

This compilation is based on CEBS significant involvement over last year in collecting and analyzing the Basel II implementation issues that cross-border groups and their supervisors believe to be the most challenging from a cross-border perspective.

This report classifies Basel II implementation into 3 groups and addresses some practical issues observed.

A) Supervisory process for model validation.
B) Pillar 1 technical issues
C) Pillar 2 issues

I cover off only some of the high level aspects to pique your interest to read the entire 18 page paper. The paper handles key issues in each of the above 3 areas and provides examples from specific scenarios around them.

Continue reading "Basel II Cross border realties - EU's CEBS releases range of practices"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 07:34 AM | Comments (1)

FDIC approves interagency Basel II based Standardized approach Capital proposal for smaller US banks;

I had earlier blogged about the US NPR Basel II interpretation for its largest banks. Consider this as chapter 2 of the same blog.

The Board of FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) yesterday issued a proposal for over 8,500 US smaller banks to have the option of adopting a simpler US version of Basel II guideline.

Continue reading "FDIC approves interagency Basel II based Standardized approach Capital proposal for smaller US banks;"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 07:59 PM | Comments (1)

PRMIA Global ERM benchmark survey results Key data points

PRMIA recently released the results of its global survey on “ ERM - A Status check on global best practices.” This survey is meant to benchmark the current and future state of ERM practices around the world. The results point to the emergence of ERM as a key component of current and future business processes.

This survey was conducted in 103 countries across risk practitioners, regulators responsible for ERM, consultants and/or vendors working in ERM and members in other related professional roles. The respondents were from firms that were amongst the largest in the respective countries as well as from mid tier and smaller firms as well.


Continue reading "PRMIA Global ERM benchmark survey results Key data points"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 10:51 PM | Comments (0)

Basel II 1st Jan 2008 accreditation milestone

It's time to appreciate and salute the tireless efforts of the folks driving the Basel II initiatives for the last couple of years around the world.

For many countries, 1st Jan 2008 accreditation being a big milestone for Basel II project sponsors and executives who i am sure have spent many sleepless nights during last 2-3 years on the Basel II accreditation and model validation initiatives.

Reviewing the current state of Basel II initiatives in 2008, provides some interesting insights on the journey of Basel II early adopters. The Basel II was expected to first be implemented as per the 2008 timelines in the 13 financially important countries represented on the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). They include Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and US. And majority of the Tier 1 financial institutions in the above economies achieved their host country Basel II accreditation on 1st Jan 2008.

Continue reading "Basel II 1st Jan 2008 accreditation milestone"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 08:20 AM | Comments (2)

New frontiers in the Insurance supervision world

Wishing everyone merry Christmas, happy holidays and a very happy new year too !

Whilst reading up on the convergence of supervision practices for financial conglomerates operating across Banking, Capital Markets and Insurance, I came across some interesting developments in the Insurance supervision world led by International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS). There is a BIS Joint Forum comprising IAIS, Basel II, IOSCO to deal with issues common to the banking, securities and insurance sectors, including the regulation of financial conglomerates.

Supervisors undoubtedly being key influencers of Risk mgmt practices globally. This article focuses on the developments in the supervision world and its impact on Risk mgmt in the Insurance industry.

Continue reading "New frontiers in the Insurance supervision world"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 12:31 PM | Comments (1)

Fed Reserve's creative FedVille !

Risk Mgmt and Compliance is generally all serious business, albeit I am sure we all do come across some colorful characters, incidents that provide the much needed breaks, extra spice and humor to the profession. Occasionally I try to seek out expressions of creativity, innovation and humor in the financial markets.

Whilst researching on creativity and innovation in markets, I came across a creative offering around financial literacy from Fed Reserve and found it fascinating enough to blog on this, even though other bodies too have done this e.g. Stock exchange simulations, FX markets games etc.

Continue reading "Fed Reserve's creative FedVille !"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 05:55 AM | Comments (3)

Convergence of Risk Capital, Disclosures in the PE, Hedge Funds, M&A era !

Hola from Barcelona, Spain.

In preparation for a Risk mgmt and Excel bootcamp here in Barcelona, I was studying the European Risk mgmt practices related to transparency and risk controls specially in context of Private equity, Hedge funds and much publicized M&A deals. At a broad level, these are about more transparency for investors based on EU instituted guidelines for streamlining M&A regulations last year as well as related to Hedge Funds operations. These are expected to have wide ranging implications for the markets guidelines in the US and the rest of the world too.

Continue reading "Convergence of Risk Capital, Disclosures in the PE, Hedge Funds, M&A era !"

Posted by Sai Sireesh at 04:21 AM | Comments (0)

Sai Sireesh


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