Speaker Biographies
Kanwardeep Ahluwalia
Head of EMEA Markets Risk and Deputy Chief Risk Officer for EMEA
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Kanwardeep joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch from Swiss Re where he served both as the Head of Financial Risk Management (FRM) and the Reinsurance CRO for EMEA. In these roles, he had responsibility for all group-wide credit and financial market risks, including model validation and price verification, as well as the full spectrum of insurance, regulatory and operational risks for Swiss Re’s business in Europe. Prior to that, he worked at Bear Stearns where he had a number of positions leading to the roles of CRO for Europe & Asia and Global Head of Market Risk. This was preceded by a period working in regulation for the UK’s former Securities & Futures Authority.
Kanwardeep holds a degree in Physics from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University.
Marcus Chromik
Member of the Board of Managing Directors
Commerzbank AG
Marcus Chromik has been a member of the Board of Managing Directors of Commerzbank since January 2016, with responsibility for Group Risk Management.
The holder of a doctorate in nuclear physics started as Divisional Head Market Risk Management at Commerzbank in 2009 and took over the role as Chief Credit Risk Officer in 2012. He came from Postbank, where he had ultimately been responsible for the liquidity management and the credit treasury. He began his professional career with McKinsey in 2001. As a Consultant there he primarily advised companies from the financial sector on risk management through to 2004.
Alison Cottrell
CEO
Banking Standards Board (BSB)
Alison Cottrell is CEO of the Banking Standards Board (BSB), a nonstatutory organisation established in April 2015 to help raise standards of behaviour and competence across the UK banking sector. The BSB provides the boards and senior teams of member banks and building societies with the evidence, support and challenge to help them manage the culture of their organisation and identify and learn from good practice. Alison began her career in the City of London as an economist covering international fixed income and currency markets. She joined HM Treasury in 2001, becoming Director of Financial Services in 2009 with responsibility for a wide range of policy areas including bank lending, payments, competition and pensions guidance. She combined this role for the three years to 2014 with that of Director of Corporate Services, focusing on staff development, engagement and culture.
Birgit Dietl-Benzin
Chief Risk Officer
UBS Europe SE
Education
2001 Diploma in Financial Engineering, Karlsruhe University (TH)
1993 – 1996 Apprenticeship in Banking, Deutsche Bank Kleve
Professional History
Since 2016 UBS Europe SE Member of the Management Board Chief Risk Officer
2005- 2016 UBS Deutschland AG
2016 Chief Financial Officer - Chief Risk Officer Germany, Member of the Management Board
2012 – 2016 Head of Local Risk Unit / Deputy Compensation Officer
2010 - 2011 Maternity leave
2010 Chief Financial Officer & Chief Risk Officer
2009 – 2010 Chief Administration Officer
2007 – 2009 Chief of Staff
2005 – 2007 Head COO Business Management
2001 – 2005 Oliver Wyman Project Manager Mandates
Member of the Administrative Board of FMS Wertmanagement AöR
Ernst Eichenseher
Head of Global Credit Risk
UniCredit
Since 2016 Ernst is Head of Group Credit Risk Modelling at UniCredit Group in Milan. Focus of the role is managing the transition of Group Credit Modelling practices from local supervision to the SSM, harmonization of Group Credit Modelling approaches and implementation of EBA's IRBA repair program. Very recently the focus was on supporting UniCredit's extraordinary NPL disposal in Italy.
Before Ernst was responsible for Credit Risk Control and Icaap at UniCredit’s German subsidiary HypoVereinsbank in Munich, also heading the bank’s recovery and resolution planning and BCBS239 projects. Up to 2011 he held roles as Head of Market Risk Management at WestLB in Duesseldorf and Head of Market and Operational Risk at HypoVereinsbank.
Ernst is member of the Banking Stakeholder Group of the European Banking Authority (EBA).
Bruce Fletcher
Group General Manager & Chief Risk Officer, Global Retail Banking & Wealth Management
HSBC
Bruce has held a variety of line and staff positions in commercial and retail banking over a 35 year career. He has specialised in Risk Management, and is currently Group General Manager & Chief Risk Officer, Global Retail Banking & Wealth Management.
He previously served as the Chief Risk Officer for Europe, for HSBC, with responsibility for managing risk across a diversified set of businesses which operate in 19 countries. Prior to that he was Chief Risk Officer, for the commercial banking, retail and insurance operations in the UK, and helped the bank to navigate the credit crisis.
Before coming to Europe in 2008 he served as Chief Retail Credit Officer in North America for HSBC, where he built a risk control function and helped the firm manage the sub prime issues in the Finance Company.
His career includes 17 years at Citibank; in his final role he was Managing Director and Senior Credit Officer in their Global Consumer Credit and Fraud Risk Management Office. Over a five year period he oversaw a range of international businesses and product lines, and helped to integrate a number of acquisitions.
Barbara Frohn
Director of Risk & Compliance Oversight Division
Financial Conduct Authority
Barbara joined the FCA as the Director of Risk and Compliance Oversight in September 2015 and is a member of the FCA Executive Committee and reports to the Board. Previously, Barbara was a Senior Managing Director Public Policy for Santander US seconded to the Institute of International Finance (IIF) in Washington, D.C. Barbara is a specialist in risk and regulatory matters.
At the IIF Barbara was leading on the work into the future of the regulatory capital framework and the benchmarking of internal risk models.
Barbara also acted as personal advisor to the CEO of Group Santander in Madrid and prior to that she was Managing Director, Global Head of Model Validation also representing Santander’s Risk division and Public Policy in various international forums. Barbara was also an official advisor to the European Parliament for a period of four years.
Between 1990 and 2008 Barbra held a number of senior roles at ABN AMRO, based in The Netherlands, including Senior Vice President, Head of Basel II Requirements.
Emma Hawkins-Haile
Managing Director
Hawkins Haile Limited
Emma is Managing Director of Hawkins Haile Limited, a specialist Global Risk and Board Level Executive Search firm. Emma has over 21 years experience of headhunting for CRO’s and their Direct Reports on a Worldwide basis. Her most recent completed searches have been in London, New York, Europe and Scandinavia. Emma as a result of Client request also offers Transformational Leadership Development on a global basis for both individuals and departments having historically run Gravitas EMEA, at the time one of the leading leadership development organisations in the UK servicing corporates and government institutions. During her executive search work she draws on both sets of skills to achieve the best results for her Clients and the individual. Emma is currently a member of the Steering Committee for PRMIA in London having previously been Co Regional Director and is heavily involved with the CRO Speaker Series, Risk Leaders Roundtables and Women in Risk Initiatives. She is happy to connect with any attendee for further discussion at their leisure.
Robert M. Iommazzo
Co-founder and Managing Partner
SEBA International
Robert is a co-founder of SEBA International and Managing Partner, leading SEBA's Financial Stability Practice. He has spent 20 years advising global financial institutions, technology and professional services clients on key executive and non-executive appointments in risk management, compliance, finance and audit.
Rob began his career in executive search at A-L Associates, Inc. in the firm’s Accounting and Finance practice. Prior to entering his career in executive search, Rob worked for Hogan Lovells LLP based in Washington, D.C.
Robert currently serves on the Board of Directors for A Chance in Life (ACIL) and the Advisory Board for the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association (PRMIA). He is an active member in the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP), the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS), the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC).
Rob holds a Bachelor of Business Administration (B.B.A.) in International Business from Loyola University Maryland.
Lesley Jones
Non-Executive Director
Non-Executive Director, N Brown plc;
Non-Executive Director, Chair of Board Risk Committee, Close Brothers Group PLC;
Non-Executive Director, Northern Bank Limited, (Den Danske Bank)
Bio Highlights:
- A former senior global financial services executive with EXCO membership and regular Board interaction
- 35 years of investment, corporate and retail banking experience, with early management responsibility for business development within telecoms, media and shipping industries
- Strong risk assessment skills applied successfully across numerous economic cycles in mature and high growth industries in OECD and emerging markets
- First-hand experience of managing business objectives within the operating constraints of a highly regulated business environment
- An independent and forward looking thinker who systematically challenges accepted wisdom and short term thinking
- Offers an open and collegiate operating style with a reputation for pragmatism and an ability to problem solve in a competitive commercial environment
Dr. Colin Lawrence
Risk and Regulatory Advisors
Lawrence Associates
Colin is a Senior Business Advisor, Board Member & Financial Risk / Regulatory Specialist, expert in challenging & advising on critical risk strategies for major global financial institutions to strengthen their business model. His key value proposition includes: leveraging a diverse senior background in the risk arena to deliver targeted risk advisory & improve Board effectiveness; supporting the design & refinement of complex business strategies to direct major organizational, cultural & strategic transformations; guiding the delivery of governance & risk audits across multiple business stakeholders to embed robust control frameworks; and nurturing external stakeholder relations with regulators & government agencies to ensure ongoing business compliance.
Colin’s early career included VP/MD/Senior Leadership roles with companies including Citicorp, Union Bank of Switzerland, Barclays Capital and Republic National Bank of New York. In 2001, he established LA Risk & Financial to provide risk advisory services and project management to major global banks. Colin then became Risk Management & Compliance Lead for IBM Global Business Services in Asia Pacific/China for 3 years before being appointed as Director to create and lead the new FSA Risk Specialists division and become its first Director for the next four years. He was instrumental in the implementation of the UK Government Credit Guarantee Scheme (CGS) in October 2008 and then designed and built the first ever UK bank wide stress testing regime.
In 2012 he took became Strategic Risk Advisor I to the Deputy Governor Bank of England & CEO of the Prudential Regulatory Authority, Colin then moved to Ernst & Young as Partner for Risk Management & Regulation to identify key regulatory and risk enterprise challenges for major financial services clients. Colin’s academic career includes a current Honorary Visiting Professor role at UCL, specialising in Finance & Risk Management. Earlier Professorships include Cass Business School and a 8 year period with the Graduate School of Buisness, Columbia University, NYC. Colin is currently a key advisory board member with organisations including PRMIA (UK), Appomattox Investment Management, Cass Business School and Parker Fitzgerald Consulting.
Kevin O'Rourke
Managing Director & Chief Risk Officer (Europe)
Mizuho Bank, Ltd
Kevin O'Rourke is General Manager & Chief Risk Officer (Europe) for Mizuho Bank, Ltd and a Supervisory Board member of Mizuho Bank Europe (based in Amsterdam). He is based in London and his responsibilities cover all aspects of risk oversight including market, liquidity, credit and operational risk. Whilst focusing on the EMEA region, Kevin has a truly Global view on risk management and risk regulation given that Mizuho is a GSIFI.
Kevin has worked in the industry for over 25 years and has gained experience through a variety of roles however his primary focus and discipline for the past 20 years has been in the area of Risk Management and Oversight. He is a member of PRMIA London Advisory Committee and Global Membership Committee. Kevin also sits on the Advisory Committee for the European Risk Management Council (ERMC), a think tank of risk executives from leading financial institutions and global corporations operating in Europe.
Christine Palmer
Chief Risk Officer
Aldermore Bank PLC
Christine joined Aldermore as Chief Risk Officer in 2016 where she is responsible for risk including Credit, Operational, Compliance, Conduct and Financial Crime risk as well as Capital and Liquidity risks. Established in 2009 Aldermore provides specialised banking across selected segments of the UK market. Christine has over 28 years’ experience in risk management, corporate and commercial banking, having held roles at ING Bank N.V., where she spent eight years across London and Amsterdam, Ernst & Young LLP and The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC. Her career at RBS spanned almost 14 years, during which time she held a number of senior positions in the Risk function including divisional chief risk officer and senior credit risk roles. She was most recently Global Head of Operational Risk and Director of Risk, Services.
Dr. Tony Rooke
Director Reporting
CDP
Tony is Director, Reporting, and Project Director for the CDP's Reimagining Disclosure Initiative. He is responsible for the delivery of CDP's sector strategy, including financial and non-financial sectors, inclusion of the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, and evolution of the questionnaires and guidance for climate, water and forests. Tony has >19 years international experience, including leading sustainability consulting teams at Logica and Infosys. He has helped organizations achieve their sustainability visions whilst improving bottom lines by tens of £millions. Tony has a PhD (Particle Physics) from UCL, and is a GACSO member of IEMA
John Scott
Chief Risk Officer
Zurich Commercial
John is Chief Risk Officer for Zurich Commercial. He joined Zurich in 2001 becoming Head of Risk Insight in 2007 and took on his current role in 2009. John leads the global, regional and local implementation of the Group’s enterprise risk management strategy across Zurich’s Commercial business.
A graduate of Oxford University, with a PhD in geology from Aberystwyth University, John's early career was in the upstream oil & gas industry, where he gained wide-ranging international experience with BP. In 1995 he gained his MBA at Cranfield and joined BOC, working in Group Strategy & Planning team and then helping to develop BOC’s fast-growing Edwards business division.
John is a member of the Institute of Directors in the UK and is a contributor to the World Economic Forum Global Risks Report.
Raj Singh
Group Chief Risk Officer
Standard Life Aberdeen plc
Appointed Group Chief Risk Officer in January 2013, Raj Singh is responsible for developing strategies to manage financial, strategic and operational risks across the global Standard Life Aberdeen group, with operations in 32 countries and £670 billion in AUM.
Before joining Standard Life Aberdeen, Raj had acquired extensive experience in financial services worldwide. In 2011 he established the advisory firm Accredere AG in Switzerland, advising on capital, risk, and reinsurance issues, and remains a non-Executive Board member. From 2007 to 2011, Raj was Group Chief Risk Officer at Swiss Re Insurance Company Ltd in Switzerland, where he was also a member of the Executive Board and Committee. Before this, he was Group Chief Risk Officer at Allianz SE in Germany, a position he held from 2002. Prior to this he held various senior sales/relationship management and risk positions at Citibank from 1988 to 2002. He has also served on the Boards of publicly traded financial institutions as well as principal banking, insurance and reinsurance subsidiaries of companies where employed.
He is a member of the House of Finance Advisory Board at the International Center for Insurance Regulation at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany and President of Hoerner College Society in Lucknow, India.
He works in London and Edinburgh and resides in Rueschlikon, Switzerland with his spouse and three children.
Chris Sparks
Chief Risk Officer
Atom Bank
Chris joined Atom Bank, the UK’s first bank built exclusively for mobile, as Chief Risk Officer in October 2015, where he is a member of the Executive Committee and also Chair of the Executive Risk Committee. Prior to Atom, Chris has held a variety of senior positions in risk and finance at firms including Virgin Money, RBS, GE Capital and HSBC. He has also lectured for a number of years at both De Montfort University and the University of Birmingham.
Alan Wheatley
Economics Writer
Author, The Power of Currencies
Alan Wheatley is an economics writer and editor based in London. He was global economics correspondent for Reuters until November 2013. In the course of a 33-year career with the news agency he reported from more than 40 countries and had postings in London, Frankfurt, Paris, New York, Washington, Tokyo, Singapore and Beijing. He attended many IMF, G7 and EU summits and reported on landmark economic events including the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s; the collapse of Continental Illinois bank; the 1985 Plaza Accord; the 1987 Wall Street crash; negotiations to create the euro; Japan’s struggle to defeat deflation; the meteoric rise of China; and the euro zone crisis.
Alan is the editor and co-author of the book ‘The Power of Currencies’, which explores the consequences of looming challenges to the dollar as the world’s pre-eminent reserve currency.
Thomas C. Wilson
Chief Risk Officer
Allianz Group
Tom Wilson is Chief Risk Officer at Allianz Group, responsible for all of Allianz’s global insurance and asset management businesses. Prior to joining Allianz in 2008, Tom was the Chief Risk Officer for ING Insurance, joining in 2005; Global Head, Finance & Risk Practice at Oliver Wyman & Company (a consulting firm specializing in serving financial services firms in risk, strategy and organization) joining in 2002; CFO of Swiss Re New Markets joining in 1998 (responsible for the risk management, financial / management reporting, treasury and back-office operations for the alternative risk transfer and capital markets activities of Swiss Re); and, Global Head, Risk Management Practice, at McKinsey & Company, joining in 1990. Tom is widely published and is the author of Value and Capital Management: A Handbook for the Finance and Risk Functions of Financial Institutions published in the Wiley Finance Series. Publications of his book translated into Chinese, Korean and Japanese are forthcoming.
Tom has spent most of his professional career in Europe, having lived and worked in Munich, Amsterdam, New York, London and Zurich. Tom earned his BSc in Business Administration with honors from the University of California at Berkeley and his PhD in Economics from Stanford University. Tom is a dual American/Swiss citizen.
Tom recently joined the PRMIA Board of Directors to help set the tone and pace of a vibrant and growing community driving the future of the risk profession.
Back to agenda
Monday Lunch Roundtable Primer
12:30 - Lunch Roundtables - The Future of the Profession
Should we recommend a career in Risk Management to a person graduating from university? Will it provide 40 plus years of satisfying and secure employment? A career that will be rewarding in terms of job satisfaction and remuneration?
We are not the first industry to be faced with that question but we maybe the last generation in our profession to have benefitted from rewarding and largely secure employment.
During the majority of the last 40 years the financial services sector grew its share of global GDP. Until ten years ago this offered security for the vast majority as the number employed dramatically increased. During this time automation relieved much of the tedium and left us with the more interesting aspects of our roles. Technology also enabled us to expand new risk management products and new measures and controls to manage them.
At the heart of these developments was the need for experienced judgement combined with questioning curiosity to improve. The only source of these key ingredients were trained and experienced human beings. The supply of which was, for much of the period, outstripped by demand and consequently reward increased.
Although the events of ten years ago have changed the trajectory of financial services share of GDP, our profession continued to benefit from a reallocation of resource demand into risk management. As industry participants dramatically managed costs down our professions share rose. This puts our profession in the spot light, the focus now facing us is how to improve risk management with fewer risk managers.
This happens at a time when potentially the human race stands on the threshold of developing Artificial Intelligence or Cognitive Computing and Learning “machines”. Is technology that enabled our rewarding careers now about to bite the next generation?
Many of you will have heard about IBM’s Watson. It has already established a track record of correct diagnosis for human illnesses that exceeds the best average accuracy of doctors with 10 years of medical training and experience. Another version is already dispensing legal advice with similar accuracy.
Could it happen to risk management?
To answer that question we need to examine what an AI like Watson or Googles AlphaGo actually does. Is the threat real?
Firstly such AI’s do not require structured data that complies to a precise text or numbers in a parameterised field and therefore does not require the humans to determine, design and populate those fields. The AI acquires knowledge from reading. It is taught how to read free form text in books, on line news, blogs, emails, messages and tweets. It is able to use this data to inform itself about a field of expertise. It ingests all the available thinking about the field of expertise without needing intervention or structure. The quantity that it holds and can instantly access in current memory is superior to a human.
Then the AI has the ability to constantly update from all sources that it is constantly connected to. It does this with a scale and breadth that a human cannot match. In this way it is no longer dependent upon out of date references to project the future outcomes.
It then makes decisions in a manner similar to humans. We study or observe the information in front of us from which we are expected to choose. Then we run hypothesis of the likely outcomes that the facts presented might possibly lead to. The next step is we evaluate the various hypothesis using our knowledge and experience to judge which is in our opinion the most likely outcome and finally we decide. This is essentially a human based algorithm that uses our inherited values and the re-countable experience we have gathered. These steps are replicated by an AI but its evaluations and pattern recognition are based upon the breadth and depth of data that we cannot match from our experience.
The AI never forgets the knowledge it has amassed. It does not have human bias or the emotions of having a bad day. It studies patterns and learns to identify best outcomes in a detached manner. In the above industry experiments with AI, the pattern recognition is enabling new solutions and potential opportunities to be identified and the extrapolation that the AI undertakes is claimed to be a good approximation for human intuition.
Is it here yet for us in Risk Management? Not in any meaningful way. AI is still in high school in terms of its development. It is being experimented with in isolated and somewhat narrow applications.
Will there be delays to its arrival caused by those that will see the “rise of the machines” as dangerous and require human confirmation of its judgements and the ability to hover over the red button to shut it down before it launches the Banking equivalent of judgement day? Yes inevitably.
But is it coming? In my view yes. Our profession has all of the characteristics that would make it an obvious early target. It is not a big leap to go from scorecards and VaR models based on structured data and regular human recalibration and validation, to a situation where unstructured data and self-calibration and validation, replace us.
All that is needed is the financial incentive, an attractive return on investment. The cost of investment is falling, the distraction of a full agenda for mandatory investments in perhaps reducing and certainly the attractiveness of the prize of cutting the cost of risk management is material and growing. So my assessment is the RoI of this is moving in the direction that would accelerate its introduction.
So what would your advice be to the graduate?