|
James Lam has
written a high-level overview of enterprise risk management that will appeal to
senior executives with little or no background in the subject. Lam has served as
chief risk officer (CRO), first for a subsidiary of GE Capital, and then for
Fidelity Investments. He has worked as a consultant for Oliver, Wyman & Company.
He founded the firm E-Risks, and is today setting out as an independent
consultant. He is used to communicating with high-level decision makers—the
people who hold the purse strings—about risk management. This is evident in his
book, which reads much like a high-level marketing piece for enterprise risk
management.
This is not a book
for risk managers; it lacks practical substance. It is not a book for
researchers; it lacks scholarship. What it is is a call to arms for senior
executives. If they follow this book's advice, those executives will implement enterprise
risk management—and explore initiatives that Lam identifies as "industry best
practices."
The book is
divided into four parts. The first motivates the need for risk management and
places it in the context of today's business environment. The second describes
risk management from a mostly functional perspective—corporate governance, risk
managers, line managers, etc. It includes a chapter that attempts to introduce
many forms of risk analytics—scenario analysis, economic capital calculations,
RAROC, value-at-risk, asset-liability analysis, credit risk models, operational
risk models—in a non-technical manner, and all in 14 pages. Needless to say, it
fails. It is followed, however, by an outstanding chapter on data and technology.
This outlines recent trends in risk management systems implementations,
describing architectures that have worked, and those that have not. There is
also a nice chapter introducing alternative risk transfer (ART).
|
|
|
|
Risk Management in Context
1. Introduction
2. Lessons Learned
3. Concepts and Processes The
Enterprise Risk Management Framework
4. What is Enterprise Risk Management?
5. Corporate Governance
6. Line Management
7. Portfolio Management
8. Risk Transfer
9. Risk Analytics
10. Data and Technology
11. Stakeholder Management Risk
Management Applications
12. Credit Risk Management
13. Market Risk Management
14. Operational Risk Management
15. Business Applications
16. Financial Institutions
17. Energy Firms
18. Nonfinancial Corporations A Look
to the Future
19. Predictions
20. Everlast Financial |
|
The third part of
the book focuses on risk management application. There are chapters on market
risk, credit risk and operational risk. Three other chapters focus on risk
management in financial firms, energy firms and corporates.
The final part of
the book briefly looks to the future and makes some modest predictions about
where the field of risk management is heading.
Knowledgeable
readers will find the book clichéish. When it announces that you have to measure
a risk in order to manage it, personally, I demure. When it says there are
"uncanny parallels between Enron's rise and fall and those of Bankers Trust", I
am bemused.
This would all
matter if Lam were writing for a sophisticated, critical audience, but he is
not. His book is a non-technical, easy-to-read, page-turner. For senior
executives, it is probably the best non-technical introductory overview of
financial risk management available. If it orients those executives to the major
trends in risk management—and convinces them to fund suitable initiatives—then
the book will have served a valuable purpose.
|