Today’s chief risk officers must not only contend with the economic impact and shock of the pandemic but also manage complex challenges like racial violence, climate change, geo-political change and global supply-chain failure.  Robert Sales, GARP’s Editorial Director, speaks with Brenda Boultwood, former senior vice president and chief risk officer at Constellation Energy, and who has served as a board member at both the Committee of Chief Risk Officers (CCRO) and GARP,  about what issues top risk executives should be prioritizing, and how standard risk management techniques help firms reinvent themselves and find timely answers to risk quandaries.   For more from Brenda on this topic, click here for her CRO Outlook Column in GARP’s Risk Intelligence area.   Speaker Bio   Brenda Boultwood is an independent risk management consultant. She is the former senior vice president and chief risk officer at Constellation Energy, and has served as a board member at both the Committee of Chief Risk Officers (CCRO) and GARP. Previously, she was a senior vice president of industry solutions at MetricStream, where she was responsible for a portfolio of key industry verticals, including energy and utilities, federal agencies, strategic banking and financial services. Before that, she worked in a number of risk management, business roles and as the global head of strategy, Alternative Investment Services, at JPMorgan Chase, where she developed the strategy for the company's hedge fund services, private equity fund services, leveraged loan services and global derivative services. She currently serves on the board of directors at the Anne Arundel Workforce Development Corporation.

GARP Risk Podcast

Transformational Risk Leadership in Turbulent Times

The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of environmental and social risk factors, as well as strong governance. Business structures are changing to become more resilient and sustainable, leading to a greater focus on G and S as companies align purpose with profits. In this podcast, Elena Philipova, Global Head of ESG Proposition at Refinitiv, discusses the primary gaps the current crisis has revealed and how incorporating ESG factors can mitigate risk.   For further insights from Refiitiv, tune into the Refinitiv Sustainability Perspectives podcast.   Speaker Bio Elena Philipova, Global Head ESG Proposition, Refinitiv Elena is the Global Head ESG Proposition at Refinitiv, formerly the Financial and Risk business of Thomson Reuters. She is responsible for the end-to-end management of the ESG business, products and services. Elena is the Rapporteur for the Benchmarks group of the EU Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance appointed by the European Commission. Previously, Elena was Head of Company Content Management at Thomson Reuters, where she led the Global Investing and Advisory Content Management Team. Other previous roles at Thomson Reuters include Content Specialist Manager, Content Proposition Manager and Head Data Quality. Elena worked as Senior ESG Analyst at ASSET4, the ESG data provider acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2009, and started her career as Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley. Elena holds an MBA and BA in Finance and International business from Stetson University.        

ESG in a COVID-19 World: The Risks You Can't Ignore

Shutting down the global economy in the age of Covid-19 was tough. Reopening is proving even harder. How should organizations continue operating in this new normal? What are best practices and lessons learned from past outbreaks including SARS, MERS, H1N1, H5N1, Zika, and Ebola, and other hazards. In this podcast, Chloe Demrovsky, President & CEO of the Disaster Recovery Institute, explores the ways in which professionals can better prepare for and respond to the next crisis. Disaster Recovery Institute is a leading global nonprofit that helps governments, Fortune 500 companies and financial and other institutions around the world prepare for and recover from disasters by providing education, accreditation, and thought leadership in business continuity, disaster recovery, cyber resilience and other areas. Speaker Bio Chloe Demrovsky is the President and CEO of Disaster Recovery Institute International, the oldest and largest nonprofit that helps organizations around the world prepare for and recover from disasters by providing education, accreditation, and thought leadership in business continuity, disaster recovery, cyber resilience and related fields. Founded in 1988, DRI has certified 15,000+ resilience professionals in 100+ countries and at 95 percent of Fortune 100 companies. She previously served for three years as Executive Director during which time she led DRI to a record number of certified professionals with a 42% increase and oversaw the launch of a number of valuable initiatives including the DRI Online Library, the Collegiate Conference Program, the DRI Webinar Program, the Future Vision Thinktank, a new risk management training and certification program, the launch of DRI’s premier organizational certification, and the most substantive revision of DRI’s core training program in the history of the organization. During her tenure, DRI’s conference reached a record level of attendance and the organization launched a series of new committees dedicated to better serving the industry’s diverse needs including Women in Business Continuity, Young Leaders in Resilience, and the Veterans’ Outreach Program. She built the relationship with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, is a Board Director for the DRI Foundation, and a Certified Business Continuity Vendor (CBCV). She is a senior Forbes contributor, has authored numerous articles, appeared on Bloomberg TV, MSNBC and Fox, and has served as an expert source for The Associated Press, USA Today, LA Times, Conde Nast Traveler, ABC News, and more. She has presented at dozens of events across four continents and conducted on-site briefings for government officials, government bodies including the European Commission and international organizations as well as for visiting delegations. She is a Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities Subject Matter Advisor and served as an editor for the 2017 version of The Professional Practices for Business Continuity Management, the coordinator for the first International Glossary for Resiliency and the International Editor for Thrive International Blog and Thrive Iberoamerica, DRI’s Spanish-language publication.

The Risks of Reopening

Continuing our theme from the last episode of the COVID series, in this special episode of the Climate Risk Podcast Series, host and Co-president of the GARP Risk Institute, Jo Paisley, is again joined by John Scott, Head of Sustainability Risk for the Zurich Insurance Group. Having briefly touched on some of the interconnections that exist between climate change and the ongoing COIVID-19 crisis in the previous episode, John has kindly returned to talk in more depth about this timely subject.   The episode addresses three key questions: Why does climate change make the occurrence of future pandemics more likely? Why would climate change worsen the impacts of a pandemic, whilst making the response harder? Why is this important for risk professionals and what is their role moving forward?   If you have any questions, thoughts or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com

Interconnected Risks: COVID-19 and Climate Change

COVID-19 is having a dramatic impact on the nature of market, credit, financial, and operational risks facing companies. Information about these risks is evolving at a rapid pace. To help risk managers stay informed of the latest developments and address the challenges associated with COVID-19, GARP has launched a podcast series featuring lively discussions with thought leaders and experts.   This week we will be taking a look at the intersection between the COVID-19 crisis and risks around Climate Change. The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a lot of questions about the impact of the lockdowns on the environment, how quickly new behaviors can be adopted in a crisis and what lessons can be learned from our experience with COVID-19 that may be helpful as risk managers move to mitigate the expected consequences of Climate Change. In this episode, we speak with Naeem Siddiqi, Senior Advisor, Risk and Quantitative Solutions, SAS Institute Inc. and  Peter Plochan, FRM, Principal Business Solutions Manager at SAS about what COVID-19 can teach companies about mitigating climate risk.         Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series. About SAS As a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.   Speaker Bios Peter Plochan, Principal Business Solutions Manager at SAS is a FRM certified Risk Management specialist with strong analytical mindset and finance background. He is combining 10+ years of Risk Management experience from ABN AMRO Bank, PWC, Atradius, GARP, PRMIA. Since 2014 he is with SAS as global acting domain expert leveraging the latest trends in AI and analytics with the deep risk management & finance expertise.   Naeem Siddiqi is the author of Credit Risk Scorecards (Wiley & Sons, 2005), and Intelligent Credit Scoring (Wiley & Sons, 2017), and has advised and trained bankers in over 20 countries on the art and science of credit scoring. Naeem has worked in retail credit risk management since 1992, both as a consultant and as a risk manager at financial institutions.   At SAS, Naeem played a key role in the development of products relating to credit scoring. He is currently responsible for advising customers on issues pertaining to credit scoring and decisioning, risk strategy, climate change risk, AI/ML in credit risk as well as modernizing analytics infrastructures. He continues to meet and advise C-level bankers in between 40-50 top lending institutions worldwide annually.   Naeem has an Honours Bachelor of Engineering from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of London, and an MBA from York University in Toronto.      

What COVID-19 can Teach Companies about Climate Risk

Insurance plays such an important role in how we collectively navigate risk and many insurance firms are already used to dealing with the extreme weather events that are being made worse and more frequent by climate change. It is therefore important that the experience and insights found within the insurance sector are brought to bear on the pressing task of managing climate risk.   In this episode, host and Co-president of the GARP Risk Institute, Jo Paisley, is joined by John Scott, Head of Sustainability Risk for the Zurich Insurance Group. Through this conversation you will find specific insights into the nature of physical risk, as well as the ways in which insurance firms are positioned to guide effective action and investment towards both mitigation and adaptation efforts.     If you have any questions, thoughts or feedback regarding the Climate Risk podcast series, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com   --------------------------------   Speaker Bio: John Scott is Head of Sustainability Risk for the Zurich Insurance Group. He joined Zurich in 2001 becoming Head of Risk Insight in 2007 and was Chief Risk Officer for Zurich’s Global Corporate and Commercial Insurance businesses from 2009 to 2017. He took on his current role in 2018. John leads the Group’s engagement on sustainability risk, both internally and externally as the way Zurich delivers its purpose and values. For the last ten years, in his roles as CRO for Commercial Insurance and as Head of Sustainability Risk, John has increasingly focused on climate change as a risk that affects the insurance industry. His unique combination of previous roles and experiences in the oil & gas and chemicals industries, together with his involvement in many industry and Government organisations, has given him a deep understanding of the risks and opportunities that climate change presents to companies, governments and society at large. John is a member of the Institute of Directors in the UK, is on the Advisory Board to the World Economic Forum Global Risks Report and has contributed to industry and Government policy on climate change and green finance, through many organisations. John’s expertise in sustainability risk and, in particular climate change risk, has made him a sought-after speaker at numerous international conferences.

What can the insurance sector teach us about Climate Risk?

The effects of COVID-19 spread to virtually every aspect of Hong Kong’s economy, impacting operational, credit and market risks at all types of businesses, including banks. Many companies, in fact, saw payments for goods from customers in the US and Europe grind to a complete halt. In response, the city’s central bank, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), enacted a series of measures to assist banks, small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individuals.     In this podcast, Arthur Yuen, deputy CEO of HKMA, will address: • How the HKMA responded to the pandemic’s crippling economic impact; • Steps the HKMA and banks are taking to help SMEs and other severely-impacted industries; • The largest risk management challenges COVID-19 has presented; • The lessons learned from previous pandemics, like SARS; and • Measures the HKMA may enact to improve operational resilience in the financial system

How Hong Kong is Fighting the Pandemic

We would like to thank our listeners for tuning in to our special subseries on COVID-19. We will be skipping this week due to the holidays, but will resume our weekly series on June 1st with an enlightening conversation with Arthur Yuen, Deputy CEO of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, on The Economic and Risk Impact of COVID-19: How Hong Kong is Fighting the Pandemic. We hope everyone has a good and safe holiday, and we look forward to seeing you next week.

A quick message from GARP

The current pandemic is having an enormous impact on the leveraged loan markets which until recently were priced to perfection. Bid-Ask spreads have widened dramatically, and leveraged loan indexes have fallen substantially. One of the biggest areas of concern is over collateralization of CLOs, particularly in the US. We would like to invite you to share your insights into these challenges facing the leveraged loan market and risks facing banks, asset managers and investors.   GARP is happy to partner once again with SAS on this episode, which features, David Phillips, CFA, ASA, EA, a Director, Liability Driven Investment Strategies at Parametric, John McMurray, CPA, CFA, the Chief Risk Officer & Chief Audit Executive at Russell Investments, and Stas Melnikov, CFA, FRM – Head of Risk Product Portfolio and Strategy at SAS.   Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series. About SAS As a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk. For more resources from SAS - click here.  Bios of our Guests   John McMurray is chief risk officer and chief audit executive at Russell Investments. He has over 35 years of experience in financial services on both the buy and sell sides in asset managers and banks.   David Phillips has spent almost 30 years in the pension industry advising plan sponsors on strategic allocation and risk, particularly LDI, and overseeing global pension investments for a Fortune 500 plan sponsor.   Stas Melnikov, CFA, FRM, is head of risk product portfolio and strategy at SAS. Prior to SAS, Stas was head of market and liquidity risk at Russell Investments and head of residential credit loss forecasting at JPMorgan Chase.     

COVID-19’s Impact on the Leveraged Loan Markets

To help risk managers stay informed of the latest developments and address the challenges associated with COVID-19, GARP has launched a podcast series featuring lively discussions with thought leaders and experts.   The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic – including crashing stock markets, plummeting oil prices and soaring unemployment – has resulted in significant credit issues at financial institutions across the globe. All of the uncertainty has not only raised questions about bank capitalization and stability but also forced firms to adjust their credit risk models and assumptions. In this GARP podcast episode, Cris deRitis, Deputy Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics, will discuss how the pandemic is effecting credit risk modeling, Current Expected Credit Loss regulation and stress testing in the US and Europe.    

COVID-19: CECL, Stress Testing and Overall Credit Risk Impact

COVID-19 is having a dramatic impact on the nature of market, credit, financial, and operational risks facing companies. Information about these risks is evolving at a rapid pace. To help risk managers stay informed of the latest developments and address the challenges associated with COVID-19, GARP has launched a podcast series featuring lively discussions with thought leaders and experts.   In a suddenly volatile economy, spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, and despite government interventions, bankruptcies and increased defaults will more than likely increase. With new and immature data, produced by this unexpected economic downturn, automated modeling processes will help enhance efficiencies, but data issues will require human judgment for model development. Join Naeem Siddiqi, Senior Advisor in the Risk Research and Quantitative Solutions, SAS and Jerome Caron, Specialist of Analytics Solutions, SAS to take a look at strategic approaches to a calculating Credit Risk in the context of COVID-19.   For a related resource on this subject - click here.          Over the years, GARP and SAS have worked together to bring risk practitioners unique insights on a variety of topics related to financial risk and have partnered on this episode of our COVID podcast series. About SAS As a leader in analytics, SAS has more than 40 years of experience helping organizations solve their toughest problems. Our unrelenting commitment to innovation enables banks to modernize and sustain a competitive edge. SAS provides an integrated, enterprise-wide risk-management platform for managing risk in an organization, from strategic to reputational, operational, financial or compliance-related risk management. Learn more about how SAS is driving innovation and business value for risk and finance professionals at www.sas.com/risk.  

Calculating Credit Risk: The COVID – 19 Factor

COVID-19 is having a dramatic impact on the nature of market, credit, financial, and operational risks facing companies. Information about these risks is evolving at a rapid pace. To help risk managers stay informed of the latest developments and address the challenges associated with COVID-19, GARP has launched a podcast series featuring lively discussions with thought leaders and experts. Our first interview is with Ed Amoroso, currently Chief Executive Officer of TAG Cyber LLC, a global cyber security advisory, training, consulting, and media services company supporting hundreds of companies across the world. Ed recently retired from AT&T after thirty-one years of service in the cybersecurity space. In recent years, financial institutions have proven to be vulnerable to cyberattacks, leaving risk teams scrambling.  With more work pushed online than ever before due to COVID-19 – and hackers finding new ways to exploit networks - understanding new and evolving cyber risks is even more critical today. How can cyber risk and risk management in general keep up with the sophistication and scale of potential attacks against company systems in a work environment that has already been disrupted? What role do CROs and risk managers play in this battle and what role do cybersecurity professionals play in risk management in the future.   To access our full library of COVID-19 content click here.     Dr. Ed Amoroso is currently Chief Executive Officer of TAG Cyber LLC, a global cyber security advisory, training, consulting, and media services company supporting hundreds of companies across the world. Ed recently retired from AT&T after thirty-one years of service, beginning in Unix security R&D at Bell Labs and culminating as Senior Vice President and Chief Security Officer of AT&T from 2004 to 2016. Ed has been Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the Stevens Institute of Technology for the past twenty-seven years, where he has introduced nearly two thousand graduate students to the topic of information security. He is also affiliated with the Tandon School of Engineering at NYU as a Research Professor, and the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University as a senior advisor. He is author of six books on cyber security and dozens of major research and technical papers and articles in peer-reviewed and major publications. Ed holds the BS degree in physics from Dickinson College, the MS/PhD degrees in Computer Science from the Stevens Institute of Technology, and is a graduate of the Columbia Business School. He holds ten patents in the area of cyber security and media technology and he has served as a Member of the Board of Directors for M&T Bank, as well as on the NSA Advisory Board (NSAAB). Ed’s work has been highlighted on CNN, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has worked directly with four Presidential administrations on issues related to national security, critical infrastructure protection, and cyber policy.

Cyberattacks and COVID-19: The New Normal

Welcome back to GARP’s Climate Risk Podcast Series. Through the course of this series we will be bringing you insights from those working at the cutting edge of climate change. We will be joined by regulators, business leaders and risk practitioners who will help us build up a holistic view of the risks and opportunities that climate change poses and explore how this might affect you in your day to day work. In this episode, host and Co-president of the GARP Risk Institute, Jo Paisley, is joined by Betsy Nelson, recently retired CRO at the EBRD. Here at GARP, we have been emphasising the importance of placing the risks associated with climate change in the broader context of sustainability, which is why we think the perspective of a development bank is such an important one.   Through this episode, you will gain insights into: The pros and cons of implementing TCFD The appropriate role of stress testing and scenario analysis The difficult question of engagement vs. divestment.     Speaker Bio: Former Vice President Risk and Chief Risk Officer of EBRD (European Bank of Reconstruction and Development) Betsy Nelson became the EBRD's Vice President Risk and Compliance and Chief Risk Officer in November 2016 and served in that role until December 2019. She had been previously Vice President of Risk. She was a member of the Bank's Executive Committee. Ms Nelson joined the EBRD in March 2012 as Vice President of the then combined Risk and Resources (Human Resources, Administrative Services and IT) and has extensive experience in the financial sector. For the three years prior to joining the EBRD, she was the Head of Credit Department in the Risk Specialists Division of the Financial Services Authority (FSA, now PRA) in the United Kingdom, where she built the Authority’s first Credit Department with a team of wholesale, retail, structured finance and Basel credit model experts. Before this she had a career spanning 30 years at JPMorgan Chase. She has worked most of her career in Europe and the UK. In her last 10 years at JPMorgan Chase, she held a number of senior management positions, including Head of Corporate Banking and Head of Client Credit Management, both for the EMEA region.

Embedding Climate Risk: Reflections of a CRO

Welcome to the first episode of GARP Podcasts Climate Risk Series. Through the course of this series we will be bringing you insights from those working at the cutting edge of climate change. We will be joined by regulators, business leaders and risk practitioners who will help us build up a holistic view of the risks and opportunities that climate change poses and explore how this might affect you in your day to day work.   In today’s show, host and Co-president of the GARP Risk Institute, Jo Paisley, is joined by Michael Sheren, Senior Adviser at the Bank of England, to discuss three foundational questions:  Where have we come from? Where are we now? Where do we need to go? 

Climate Risk: Where have we come from and where are we going?

A new report from the Financial Reporting Lab of the UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC) reveals that companies are falling short of investors’ expectations for clearer reporting on climate-related issues. It notes that while reporting on climate change is an evolving practice, investor expectations are changing rapidly. The Financial Reporting Lab of the UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC) recently released a report that reveals companies may be falling short of investors’ expectations for clear reporting on climate-related issues. In this episode, GARP Risk Institute Co-President Jo Paisley speaks with Phil Fitz-Gerald, Director of the FRC's Financial Reporting Lab about the key findings of their report, what best practices are emerging around climate related corporate reporting, and how reporting can change behavior. You can download the report here: Climate-related corporate reporting – Where to next?

Climate-related Corporate Reporting: Where to Next?

Welcome to the Risk Intelligence Podcast, where the Global Association of Risk Professionals, also known as GARP, brings together the world’s foremost Risk Practitioners, from around the globe, for in depth insights and discussions on today’s most important risk issues in finance and energy. Here is your chance to listen in.  

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GARP Risk Podcast

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