With new episodes of 1990s hit series The X-Files airing in January, it got me thinking about the show’s tagline “The Truth Is Out There” and how it applies to the cloak and dagger world of operational risk. The X-Files…
Risk management and cognitive biases
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of putting many people in a room to discuss and assess risks you’d know that not everyone assesses every risk the same way. To some a particular risk is high, while to others it…
The iPhone 4S of enterprise risk management
Last year Apple released the iPhone 4S and critics pointed out it was pretty much the iPhone 4 with a big-s glued on. Although there were some minor improvements from the iPhone 4, overall it was pretty much the…
Basel III and the sugar tax
Have a read at this post my Twitter chum Don van Deventer co-wrote on his alma mater’s blog site called Basel III and the Problems with Risk Management by Excel. Despite Don writing an excellent piece that includes a Basel…
What Israel can teach us about managing risk
This article appeared in the Toronto Star on December 31, 2009. While we are holding people up at airports and making them throw out bottles of mouthwash and shampoo, the Israelis seem to have figured out how to manage their…
Risk Management of Everything
About five years ago I stumbled upon a really great essay titled The Risk Management of Everything by Michael Powers and published by Demos. I was doing some housekeeping and found it in my files and decided as my New…
More ERM at colleges and universities
On September 8, 2009, I published some thought leadership from PwC about ERM in colleges and universities. Today I came across a 2009 survey conducted by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges and United Educators about the…
Back to school: ERM in universities and colleges
Seeing how the day after Labour Day is traditionally the first day of school, it seemed fitting to answer the question: “Hey, Riskczar, can ERM work in universities and colleges?” The short answer is, yes. (It works anywhere silly.) So…
Business Under Fire
There are a series of articles published by RiskTech which are quite interesting on risk management in various industries; the one I read was on hotel risk management but it only scraped the surface of hotel risk management. (BTW, the…
My favourite fraud ever
My favourite financial fraud of all time has to the work of John M. Rusnak at Allfirst Bank, a sub of Allied Irish Bank, perpetrated in 2001. Following the events which cost this Irish bank tens of millions of losses,…