Driven by a desire to improve shareholder value and to comply with a host of risk-related regulations, many banks are looking to integrate their disparate risk management components.What are the specific risk strategies and risk tools that need to be pieced together in order to achieve an integrated risk management environment? What ... click here for more details.

Spurred by enormous growth over the past couple of years, synthetic CDOs – securitizations driven by credit derivatives technology – now comprise the bulk of the collateralized debt obligations market. However, despite its success, the synthetic CDO market is still ripe with risk for both investors and bank arrangers. But ... click here for more details.

Measuring and managing mortality risk is a huge challenge for risk managers. It is particularly hard to get a handle on extreme mortality events, but there is at least one viable modelling tool: extreme value theory.What is EVT and how can it be used to measure the distribution tail of ... click here for more details.

Many articles have already been written about the potential impact of the Basel II capital accord. But what other issues are causing restless nights for risk managers? Well, according to a recent joint study conducted by Deloitte and GARP, operational risk, structured transactions and collateralization are among the most significant contemporary ... click here for more details.

You’ve probably heard of enterprise risk management – but how about enterprise risk assessment? This is the internal name Countrywide Financial Corp. has given to a process it’s implementing to identify risk, determine risk tolerance and manage risk firmwide.When and why did the firm launch this initiative, what are the ... click here for more details.

Editors Letter, Integration Quest: Seeking Answers to the Risk Puzzle

Basel II: Ratings Integrity and Data Warehousing Among Key Hurtles

People on the Move

How did portfolio insurance (PI), an investment strategy that rose to prominence back in the 1980s, advance the cause of risk management? What are the origins of PI, and what is its connection to the Black-Scholes-Merton options model? And will the next innovation in long-term investing leverage aspects of PI? ... click here for more details.

Richard Thornburgh, the chairman of the Securities Industry Association and the vice chairman of the executive board of Credit Suisse First Boston, has strong opinions on the potential impact of Basel II, the aftershocks of 9/11 and the efficiency of existing risk models for operational risk and credit risk. In ... click here for more details.