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RMI Hosts the Thirteenth Instalment of its Hallmark Annual Risk Management Conference
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On 25 July 2019, RMI held the Thirteenth Annual Risk Management Conference at Conrad Centennial Singapore. The conference was attended by more than 170 participants and featured discussions on some challenges in applied risk management, systemic risk, managing new financial risks in light of climate change as well as latest scientific research in finance, risk management, economics, and related fields. The conference brought together policy makers, leaders from the industry, regulators, and internationally renowned academics. The one-day conference featured a keynote talk, two policy forum panel discussions, two invited talks and 28 scientific paper presentations.
RMI’s Director and Goh Keng Swee Professor of Economics, Prof. Sun Yeneng welcomed the crowd with a few opening remarks before introducing the distinguished guest and keynote speaker Prof. Dr. Martin Hellwig. Prof. Dr. Martin Hellwig. Prof. Dr. Hellwig has an extensive background in academia and policy making. He is Director Emeritus, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods and Honorary Foreign Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among others. His talk focused on “Systemic Risk, Macro Shocks, and Macro-Prudential Policies.” Prof. Dr. Hellwig’s talk garnered overwhelming interest from the audience and one participant commented, “the keynote lecture on systemic risk was extremely topical and expansively covered macro-level issues.”
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The keynote speech was followed by a panel discussion on the current challenges in applied risk management. Some of the issues discussed included macroeconomic and geo-political uncertainty, technological innovations and their role in risk mitigation, model risk management, robust stress testing, and capital and risk taking behaviour of financial institutions. Chaired by RMI’s Adjunct Professor, Mr. Lutfey Siddiqi, the panel was comprised of a diverse pool of industry experts, namely, Mr. Gary Ang, Former Head of Investment Risk Management at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Mr. Chan Kok Seong, Chief Risk Officer of UOB, Mr. Eric Lian, Group Chief Credit Officer, Wholesale Credit Risk Management at OCBC, Dr. Grace Qiu, Senior Vice President, Economics and Investment Strategy Department at GIC, and Dr. Jochen Schmittmann, Head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Singapore Representative Office.
The second panel of the day delved into the topic of “Climate Change: Managing a New Financial Risk” and was co-organized by the International Association of Credit Portfolio Managers (IACPM). It began with a presentation on the financial implications of climate change with Asia as the focus, by Mr. Robert Bailey, Director of Climate Resilience at Marsh & McLennan Companies and Mr. Gaurav Kwatra, Principal at Oliver Wyman. For the second half of the panel discussion Mr. Bailey and Mr. Kwatra were joined by Mr. Abhishek Dangra, Senior Director and Sector Lead for Infrastructure (South and Southeast Asia) at S&P Global and Ms. Roshel Mahabeer, Executive Director of Sustainable Finance at Standard Chartered Bank. Along with the session chair Ms. Marcia Banks, Deputy Director at IACPM, the panel shared their views and debated on “Linking Climate Risks into Portfolio Management.”
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The second half of the day, which focused the scientific program of the conference, was divided into four tracks with two sessions each. The first track, co-organized with NUS Institute for Mathematical Sciences (IMS), firstly featured two invited speakers Prof. Steven Kou, Questrom Professor in Management and Professor of Finance at Boston University and Prof. Min Dai, Director, Centre for Quantitative Finance at NUS, who spoke on “FinTech Econometrics” and “Non-Concave Utility Maximization without the Concavification Principle” respectively. This was followed by four scientific paper presentations related to stochastic control and finance. Separately, the other three tracks featured eight selected scientific paper presentation each around topics such as firm risk, credit risk, understanding and modelling risk, macro and international finance, and asset return and risk. The scientific paper presenters featured renowned researchers from prestigious universities, such as, Boston University, Columbia University, Fudan University, Harvard University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Monash University, University of Liverpool, University of New South Wales, University of Toronto, among others. There were also a couple of researchers from government bodies such as the European Central Bank and Federal Reserve Board who presented their latest research.
Launched in 2007, the Conference has grown to a regional platform that brings together policy makers, leaders from the industry, regulators, and internationally renowned academic to enhance their risk management techniques, explore the latest investment strategies and manage the fundamental regulatory changes in the financial sector.
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