Five thorns of ISO 31000

Anyone following the G31000 forum closely will come to realize that there are some continual inconsistencies of opinion which raise their head when ISO 31000 is discussed broadly. I call these debates of contention, the Five Thorns of ISO 31000.

In this blog posting, we are going to look at these Five Thorns in more detail. The aim in the end, is to put a structural emphasis on attempting to resolve them.

Performance and VaR Together

A lot of market risk analysts often question how they can compare risk with return or the relevance of tracking error in the context of Value at Risk and performance reporting together.

In this short blog posting, I link to a presentation which explains how performance reporting, risk measurement and tracking error may be delivered side-by-side.

Addressing Procyclicality

Basel III is actually proving to be quite an ordeal for both the banking community as well as the regulators and some senior members of the regulatory community, both in the UK and the US have made public statements to this fact.

Perhaps one of the biggest issues facing banks with Basel III is how to address Procyclicality, especially if the bank is not running an Advanced IRB credit risk framework. Actually, just obtaining information about the different accepted practices on how to measure Procyclicality within a lending portfolio isn't so easy.

Just the other day I was pointed in the direction of a really good summary and publication on Procyclicality and I wanted to share this link here on the Causal Capital blog.

Can risk practices be shared?

There is a common belief among many enterprise risk managers that practices in operational risk can be applied to market or credit risk with ease. However, such thinking might be a little bit misplaced.

Let's take a look at this.
  

Monte Carlo Example

A recent discussion on the G31000 forum debates the importance of Monte Carlo but it resulted in me promising a model to the group, a straight forward and fundamental model on Monte Carlo?

I have talked about Monte Carlo before on this blog and in more than one place. However, the effort today is to develop a Monte Carlo simulation in Excel that works for operational risk losses, rather than in market risk or credit risk where the technique is so often found. The objective is to build a fully working Microsoft Excel model which isn't just statistical theory but actually exemplifies the Monte Carlo simulation process in practice.

This article explains such a model and there is a link at the end of this posting that will allow you to download the spreadsheet, if you so desire.
  

Resolving Risk Disputes

The question today is; does the use of a risk framework such as the one proposed in the ISO 31000 risk standard reduce disputes between managers in a company?

A possible upside we may be seeking from a risk framework is the improvement in the sharing of risk knowledge, as well as the communication of business intel across a company. The ability for a risk framework to assign accountability to threats would surely be even more ideal.

One would hope that if managers can formally describe the types of risks they face in their daily work and communicate this insight to internal customers, staff would become more understanding and empathetic to problems or disruptions when they occur. Oversight and disclosure is often fantastic grease for the emotional machine of sympathy.

It could of course go the other way, the risk framework may drive arguments from differing opinions on risk treatment, bickering over risk budgets and divides on ownership and accountability of threats.

In the last twenty-four hours, what did the G31000 forum vote for in our poll?
  

Importance of risk categories

So much inspiration for articles in this blog seems to originate from reading what risk practitioners are writing about on the G31000 linked-In portal. One recent debate restarted an old angst on enterprise risk categories.

Personally I am a big believer in the categorisation of risk events and while this may not be popular among many of the non-banking members of the risk community, even more so with ISO 31000 practitioners it seems, I still believe it is an important exercise to carryout. Either way, I have taken to list ten reasons why causal event categorisation is crucial for the operation of a sound enterprise risk management framework.

Inherent vs Residual Exposure

A recent debate on the G31000 Linked-In forum around the gap between Inherent versus Residual exposure has shown that there is a large deviation on opinion, not only with what these terms actually stand for but why it is important to measure inherent risk as a value in the first place.

Inherent Risk is actually not a new concept to risk management and is captured in many other risk standards such as COSO but for ISO 31000, the term has uniquely been excluded. This omission adds to the confusion on whether it should be used at all, let alone why someone would want to understand their Inherent and Residual risk side-by-side.

In this short blog, we are going to investigate these two terms and how they interrelate with each other, why and importantly how inherent risk can be estimated. 

The Risk Clock

Some things come in cycles is a common saying I am sure we have all heard before. This seems to be even more so the case when we are presented with a complex disorder which is stubborn to stamp out. We will have moments when everything looks fine, only to be presented with a set of known preconditions over and over again that result in what we thought was under control suddenly being less so.

Are risks more seasonal than we would like to first imagine?

The Dark Side of Risk Management

Risk management can be a paradox in nature and this often leads entire communities, perhaps society at large to entertain red herring solutions for systemic threats. 

Today I can see at least three man made ills which may be killing us broadly and as a global community they are. Long term side effects may take us to a place that is far worse than where we are at present. Perhaps we should carefully rethink what we are trying to achieve because we may just find our desperate first attempt to resolve the unwanted is often not the most ideal solution.

Shutting down Libor, disbanding nuclear power and embracing a never ending program of Quantitative Easing could have dangerous outcomes which are not really understood in the long term. Let's take a look at Quantitative Easing and Libor, we can talk about nuclear power another time.

How many controls are too many?

In a recent discussion on the G31000 Linkedin forum, a member put forward an interesting question. 

How many controls are too many?

Can an organisation literally have too many controls?

Cluster Events

The world of risk management is continually evolving but where is the next developmental phase for the practice of risk theory?

In my opinion, one area which offers great opportunity is the relatively undiscovered work around event predictability. Let's be real of course, there is no way to predict the future but it might be nice to understand the shape of that future.

In this blog, we review the use of the Extensible Markov Model for shaping event clusters.

PV01 vs Historical VaR

The world of fixed income is very much impacted by PV01, yet Market Risk analysts hang onto historical Value at Risk as if it is the be all for measuring potential downside. In my opinion this is a bit busted and I will explain why in this short blog post.

Understanding risk appetite

Over the last week, there have been a lot of discussions on risk appetite in the G31000 forum and while ISO 31000 refers to risk appetite as risk attitude, broadly the concept is not fully appreciated by many risk analysts in the market place.

In this blog we look at risk appetite; what it is, where it has been used and why it is important.

Risk Charting and Bubble Charts

Perhaps ten years ago; reporting risk profiles or organisational threats was a challenging thing to do for many risk analysts on the job and while the majority of risk reports were fundamentally ordinary, it became apparent quite quickly that a simple list of hazards was never going to cut it.

In this blog we look at an emerging era of risk reporting.

ROC Control Optimization

In the world of risk, analysts and managers alike try to reduce the likelihood of an event occurring by inserting controls between the event's driving factors and its outcome. Additionally, these analysts often regularly monitor specific indicators they believe will give them insight into something unwanted happening.

While the logic around this is sound, not all controls are equal and more often than not, some key risk indicators emit erroneous measures which mislead entire risk teams.

In this short post, we look at a method for weeding out erroneous control signals.

ISO 31010 and Loss Modeling

One of the most concerning trends that continually persists in operational risk management, is the lack of interest analysts have for attempting to quantify this risk exposure coherently.

In this blog we look at operational risk from the perspective of the normal and the extreme.

ISO 31000 for Property Development

It states in the ISO 31000 standards guide, that organisations of all types and sizes face internal and external factors as well as influences that make it uncertain whether and when they will achieve their objectives.

If we were to look at property development or the construction industry for example, we know that these types of issues are also likely to be evident. So, would ISO 31000 be of benefit to the construction sector?

In this short journal post, we share a presentation that reviews some of the problems of risk management in property development, how risk management currently functions in this industry sector and why it would be advantageous to adopt ISO 31000 in property development.

Retrofitting ISO 31000

There have been some interesting discussions on the G31000 forum over the last week which allude to a future of potential conflict for ISO 31000.

In this short post, we look at some of the headwinds that ISO 31000 is going meet, as the adoption of the standard ramps-up across multiple industries.
  

Cause and Effect Analysis

There are several ways of looking at operational risk specifically but perhaps one of the most exciting and intuitive methods in use today is Cause~Effect Analysis.

In this short post, we look at how Cause-Effect Analysis works and we extend a bow tie diagram further to show how it can be applied to a Cause~Effect risk space.