Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Acting on and making real the bank's formal risk management policies
Embedding risk management processes into the firm’s daily practice
through an effective risk culture
Case studies and "lessons learned" from events in 2022 and 2023
Recommendations for ensuring effective risk culture
All employees are provided with risk training as part of their induction
and have on-going refresher training
Risk appetite
Etc
Etc
© 2023 BTRM / Choudhry LinkedIn 2023 4
“Risk culture”
This lecture title starts out with “How to focus on risk culture…”
But what is “risk culture” in a bank?
What is “culture” in a bank?
What is “culture”?
Assurance: Reporting and Stress Testing Risk Framework + Key Risk Policies
REPUTATIONAL ExCo members The risk of brand damage and/or financial cost due to the failure to meet stakeholder expectations of the company’s conduct and/or
performance.
BUSINESS CFO/ (+MD’s of Biz The risk that the company suffers losses as a result of adverse variance in its revenues and/or costs relative to its business plan and
areas/ S&M) strategy.
STRATEGIC CEO (Board) The risk that the company will make inappropriate strategic choices, is unable to successfully implement selected strategies, or
changes arise which invalidate strategies. This includes all divestment programme related risks.
CLIMATE CHANGE CEO The risk of negative impact on the balance sheet arising out of physical and transitional risk of climate change
The most effective risk register is one that identifies risk types before
the bank is actually exposed to them
This implies the powers of a clairvoyant…
…but compared to the register we showed earlier, today we would
expect to add a few more
See checklist overleaf…
EXAMPLE Cyber
Assess the bank against
CQUEST
CTO Board
ChoudWest Bank
ABC Bank
Bank of Surrey
© Dean©Carter,
2023 BTRM
former/ Choudhry
Treasurer, LinkedIn 2023 30
Recognise Bank Ltd
Risk Culture
Risk culture
“Risk culture” has been defined in a number of ways and there are indeed
a number of ways of looking at it
Speaking personally, the author would simply define it as always…
“Doing the right thing”
“Do good work”
…and leave it at that. However there is much formal literature written on
this topic so we need to cover it in more than one sentence!
To us, risk culture is part of the firm’s culture, so let’s define that first
A firm’s “culture” is the beliefs and attitudes about something that people in a
particular group or organisation share, and/or
a system of shared values (that define what is important) and norms that define
appropriate attitudes and behaviours for organisational members (how to feel
and behave)
There are some common beliefs and traits that run thru these…
Firm Culture
Risk Culture
Conduct
• 1st of March Moody’s Investors Service communicate news to SVB of a likely ratings downgrade
• 8th of March ….
• The Bank’s holding company announced it was conducting a capital raise
• Bank announces a loss of approximately $1.8 billion from a sale of bond and mortgage back
securities portfolios
• Moody’s downgrades SVB Financial - senior unsecured to Baa1 from A3
• 9th of March
• Investors and depositors reacted by initiating withdrawals of $42 billion in deposits from the Bank
• Stock price plummets, 60% lower by the end of trade
• At the close of business on March 9, the bank had a negative cash balance of approximately
$958 million
• Despite attempts from the Bank, with the assistance of regulators, to transfer collateral from
various sources, the Bank did not meet its cash letter with the Federal Reserve
Source: Wikipedia.
© 2023 BTRM / Choudhry LinkedIn 2023 47
Catalyst exposing a flawed ALM discipline
SVB didn’t hedge it’s banking book interest-rate risk (see Appendix)
Unlike EU and UK banks, it wasn’t obliged to follow Basel III guidance on
interest-rate risk in the banking book
But interest-rate risk management is not a “new” discipline for a bank to follow
The Author was using the standard “DV01” method (conceptually identical to
the IRRBBB “EVE” metric suggested by the Basel Committee) to manage IRR
of bond positions at Hoare Govett Securities back in 1992….
There was nothing to stop SVB from managing its IRR….
….except its poor risk culture
Or manage its liquidity risk.
These are standard segments of asset-liability management (ALM)
discipline
But first…
…what is this “ALM” discipline?
1975-2008 Post-2010
The core of ALM discipline as practiced by banks worldwide for over 50 years is the
management of liquidity and funding risk and non-traded interest rate risk (‘IRRBB’)
© Beata Lubinska 2020. Used and adapted with permission.
Adapted
© from
2023 BTRM slide
/ Choudhry © ICAEW 2023. LinkedIn 2023 51
SVB corporate governance
• Supervisory findings >> "The examination identified fundamental weaknesses in board effectiveness, risk
management, and internal audit—three areas critical to the safety and soundness of financial
institutions"
• Concentration risk
• Liquidity risk
Every bank in the USA (not to mention in UK and EU) had to deal with
and manage the rise in interest rates during 2022 and 2023
The large majority of them didn’t go bust!
The impact of rising rates exposed a flawed funding model at Silicon
Valley Bank (as it did at Signature Bank and was shortly to at First
Republic Bank)…
Executive Credit
Commitee
Board of Directors
The news stories around this particular “G-SIFI” bank had not been
particularly positive for some years now
It reminds one of this quote from The Importance of Being Earnest, a
novella published in 1895…
The Principles of Banking, 2nd Edition, John Wiley & Sons 2022,
Chapters 18-21
https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Banking-Wiley-Finance/dp/1119755646/
110 110
$bn
$bn
Repricing Gap - No Hedging Repricing Gap - With Hedging
90 90
70 70
50 50
30 30
10 10
-10 -10
-30 -30
-50 Funding costs -0.5% -50
Receive-floating of
-70 Fixed assets give -70 +0.5% on the swap Pay-fixed on the swap
-90 +1.5% return -90 of -1%
-110 -110
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
110 110
$bn
$bn
Repricing Gap - No Hedging Repricing Gap - With Hedging
90 90
70 70
50 50
30 30
10 10
-10 -10
-30 -30
-50 Funding costs -4% -50
Receive-floating of
-70 Fixed assets give -70 +4% on the swap Pay-fixed on the swap
-90 +1.5% return -90 of -1%
-110 -110
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
According to the Paul Weiss report, the bank generated with Archegos revenues of $8.5mn
in 2019 and $17.4mn in 2020. Even with significantly increased annualized revenues of $40
million in 2021, the revenues did not cover the bank’s cost of equity capital and stood in
no relation to the effective loss potential of the transactions.
This indicates that Credit Suisse had inadequate frameworks for performance
management and risk-adjusted compensation in place. As a consequence, the bank’s
top management and Board of Directors might not have been in a position to challenge the
insufficient profitability, so that the business had incentives to accept transactions which did
not create any value for shareholders and provided the firm a bad risk-reward trade-off.
Orbit360:
Our considerations suggest that the Board of Directors of Credit Suisse should not
solely focus on the strict implementation of the recommendations of the Paul Weiss
report, but also revisit the firm-wide frameworks and methodologies which ensure that
the decision makers at Group level have all the relevant information for risk
management and the steering of the bank at hand.