PRMIA Announces the Champions of the 2023 Risk Management Challenge

On April 19, 2023, 10 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, Ireland, Hong Kong, Hungary, France, and the United States.

Our congratulations go out to the 2023 Risk Management Challenge champions, 4th Dimension from Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto: Tina Huang, Zihao (Lawrence) Gong, Gregory Mackasey, and Catherine Lu. 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.  

Congratulations also to the second-place team, The Big Three from Brunel University: Samboth Nuong, Erik Winzer, and Bharat Kandregula. The second-place finishers were also awarded fee waivers for the PRM™ designation, and all 10 of the finalist teams received PRMIA Sustaining Memberships for each team member.  

We would like to recognize and thank our global sponsor, MathWorks, for its support of the 2023 Challenge, as well as QuantUniversity for offering in-kind scholarships to the international championship team.  PRMIA is also grateful to the Toronto regional sponsor RBC, as well as the Pan-Canada sponsor, the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.

Competition Overview
Thirty-eight teams representing a total of 149 students competed in this year's Challenge. Six PRMIA chapters hosted regional round events worldwide to narrow down the field to 10 finalist teams.

This year the students analyzed a case study that addressed a risk scenario involving Citibank. In 2016, Citibank agreed to act as the Administrative Agent for a syndicated loan for Revlon, a cosmetic company. The loan amount was $1.8 billion. On August 11, 2020, Citibank intended to send an interest payment of $7.8 million to Revlon's creditors. However, due to a human error, Citibank accidentally wired the full balance of the loan, which was around $900 million, to the creditors. Citibank realized the mistake and requested the return of the funds. However, ten of Revlon's lenders refused to return the payment, arguing that it was rightfully theirs based on the terms of the loan.
 
MATLAB Challenge
As a part of the competition, teams participated in a MATLAB Challenge. Teams were tasked with a case study with focus on Carbon Neutrality Prediction and International Cooperation. The teams were tasked to use modeling to help solve 4 problems provided by MathWorks. The top finisher of the MATLAB Challenge was Team Alea, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada and will receive prizes from our global sponsor, MathWorks.


We would like to extend a special thank you to our 2023 International round judges:
Carl Densem, PRMIA Global Council
Monika Smatralova, Senior Risk Manager, ING, PRMIA Ireland
Simon Hillard, PRMIA London
Mayank Goel, PRMIA New York
Ahmed Arafa, Managing Director/Head of Portfolio Management, New Oak Capital, PRMIA Egypt