Monday, February 12, 2007


Is Your Pension Plan Operationally Sound?



If you don't have a stress ball on your desk, now might be the time to splurge. Pension fiduciaries have a lot on their plate and it seems that every day brings new challenges, operational risk management included. According to a recent Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) white paper, written in conjunction with Toomre Capital Markets, "internal processes, people and systems periodically fail" and could possibly threaten a firm's survival. The authors describe "fat finger loss" wherein "incorrect keys were pressed with no malicious intent" to illustrate the importance of controls. Being able to catch data errors before they get out of hand is the lifeblood of a well-run organization.

Rogue trading likewise illustrates operations-related vulnerability. Think back ten years. Barings Bank, a venerable global financial institution, was literally driven out of business due to the actions of a single derivatives trader. Where was the proper oversight? It's an amazing story that some still find hard to believe.

I saw this firsthand while getting my Ph.D. and teaching finance. Not a fan of showing videos in class, I made an exception for the risk management students and asked them to view the HBO movie about Barings. At the end of the film, you could hear a pin drop. Finally, a student asked if I thought such a debacle could occur again. My response? Absolutely. Any time people are part of the process (and they always are), there is room for error. That's why effective operational risk management policies and procedures are so important.

Click here to read the AMD paper. It includes a nice summary of "Ten Sound Practices for the Management and Supervision of Operational Risk" as provided by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Click here to access the full version of the BIS document.

Technology is a critical component of operational risk. Without the ability to capture and analyze data, it is virtually impossible to create and monitor limits, check for odd exposures or even detect fraud. Even with a good system, it is far from easy.

Interested readers can click here to read "The Five Keys to Risk and Risk Management" or read the several chapters in my book about operational risk, technology and modeling.

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posted by Susan Mangiero at 2/12/2007 06:00:00 AM | 0 comments | links to this post