PRMIA Announces the Champions of the 2021 Risk Management Challenge

57 teams. 221 competitors.
1 International champion team takes home the $10,000 prize!

On April 19, 2021, 12 finalist teams competed virtually in the international championship round of the PRMIA Risk Management Challenge (PRMC). The teams represented undergraduate and graduate students from colleges and universities across the globe: Canada, Egypt, India, Ireland, Romania, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Our congratulations go out to the 2021 Risk Management Challenge champions, The Big Four from Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto: Jason Ho, Xinyuan (Laura) Liu, Mingze Li, and Xiangyi (Irene) Liang. The champions were awarded the $10,000 in prize money for the team and were offered fee waivers to pursue the Professional Risk Manager (PRM™) designation. View their winning presentation.

Congratulations also to the second-place team, Risk Among Us from Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto: Xindi (Cindy) Ning, Julio (Guan Shiun) Chen Tsai, Chris Miao, and Dave Zhang. The second-place finishers were also awarded fee waivers for the PRM™ designation, and all 12 of the finalist teams received PRMIA Sustaining Memberships for each team member. View their presentation.

A special thanks to our competition sponsor QuantUniversity, which provides professional education in finance, risk management, and frontier topics in Data Science and Machine Learning. They generously offered all of the finalists an in-kind scholarship to register for one of their virtual courses, Foundations of ML and AI for the Risk Professional or Just Enough Python for Data Science - Finance Edition, to assist them in advancing their risk careers. 

Competition Overview
The international finalists advanced through preliminary and regional round competitions by analyzing a famous currency options desk scandal that happened at National Australia Bank with regards to valuation. After the analysis, they proposed a modern risk dashboard that was coded in MATLAB or alternative software packages. The solutions provided included a better risk control framework for the options market desk and an analysis of earnings smoothing. The top teams from each region were selected to advance to the finals.

The final round virtual event included a panel discussion with the judges about careers in risk management and practical aspects of the role of risk professionals across various industries. Panelists shared personal stories about their career paths as well as insights and advice for pursuing meaningful careers in the risk and finance fields.

MATLAB Challenge
As a part of the competition, teams participated in a MATLAB Challenge. Teams were tasked with creating a working dashboard and summary report derived from the National Australia Bank case that addressed both the risk and performance of an options market making desk. The top finishers of the MATLAB Challenge were announced at the final competition and will receive prizes from our global sponsor, MathWorks:

Best Presentation and Video Demonstration: The Black Swan, University of Naples "Federico II," Naples, Italy
Best Live Script/Notebook Documentation: Athena, Rutgers Business School, Newark, New Jersey
Best Interactive Dashboard: Synergy Consulting, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Best Auto-Generated Risk and Performance Report: CPDO Commemoration Committee, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Frankfurt, Germany

We would like to extend a special thank you to our 2021 international round judges:
Carlos da Costa, Senior Lecturer in Finance & Risk Management, Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia, and PRMIA Board Member
Dr. Ahmed Hammad, Credit Risk Manager, National Bank of Egypt
Stuart Kozola, Head of Product Management for Quantitative Finance and Risk Management, MathWorks
Justin McCarthy, Chairman of the Board of Directors, PRMIA Institute, and Consultant, FutureGRC 
Ken Radigan, Chief Executive Officer, PRMIA
Stuart Theakston, Financial Services Industry Manager EMEA, MathWorks

Thank you to our global sponsor, MathWorks, for its support of the 2021 Challenge

Thank you to QuantUniversity for its in-kind scholarship support

Thank you to our regional sponsors for their support of the regional finals