Recently, Risk Management is a topic which can often be find in the headlines of the news. During the last 10 years, Risk Management developed itself from an often underestimated back-office activity to an extremely important discipline in insuring the future of an organization. Events like 9/11, the Enron scandal, stock exchange crashes, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the crisis at ABN Amro and the DSB bank have highlighted the importance of Risk Management. Risk Management has never been this important. Question is, how could these crises occur? What went wrong? The risks taken, where they too large? Could you consider this bad risk management or failure of risk management? How can this be prevented in future? At the conference, we hope to find an answer to these interesting questions.
Risk Management within banks
Risk Management of banks has been a hot topic for years. Banks work with extensive and advanced Risk Models. Some examples are the Merton-Perold Model, the Froot-Stein Model and the Stulz model. So where did it go wrong in the Banking industry? Didn’t the used policies and risk models meet standards? Do banks handle Risk Management differently after the credit crunch? And is it possible that well implemented Risk Management policies can prevent a crisis as we have seen in the past years? Mr. Rijkman Groenink (ex-CEO ABN Amro) and Ir. Naus (General Manager of Corporate Market Risk Management Ing) will give their opinion on these subjects.
Risk management within companies
Not only banks pay attention to Risk Management. Also companies consider Risk Management an important topic on their daily agenda. More and more company managers see the benefits of a well implemented policy related to Risk management. Most of the times the responsibility of this policy in the hands of a Controller or a Risk Manager. In the last years it has become more common that also the Board of Executives contains a manager that specifically deals with the task of Risk Management. What does Risk Management look like in companies? And what is the added value of the Chief Risk Officer? Mr. Van Beekum (Senior Manager Corporate Risk Management) will elaborate on the Risk Management within DSM and the role he plays in managing Risks.
The role of the supervisor
Banks in the Netherlands are supervised by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). Within companies the Supervisory Board monitors the conducted policies regarding Risk Management. How does this system of supervising work exactly? Has supervision failed? And how could we improve supervision? Dr. Onno Ruding (Chairman of CEPS, Retired Vice Chairman of Citibank and former Minister of Finance) will give his vision on supervision and the globalization of this supervision.
The insurance of exceptional risks
One way for companies for companies to hedge against risks is insurance. But which considerations do companies take in to account when they insure themselves? What options are available? How do insurers insure themselves? And how do we have to deal with political risks and the threat of terrorist attacks? Drs. Geerdes (CEO Aon) will consider the role of (re)insurance and will also digress on Political and Terror Risk Mapping at Aon.
