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CRO RISK FORUM: Systemic risk – it’s still out there

28 July 2009

Can enterprise risk management cope with contagion? Oliver Peterken, CRO of Aspen Re, explains why macro-level systemic-risk should be kept under close review

Read more: cfo forum

The worst financial crisis since the 1930s has not unreasonably caused a crisis of confidence among the proponents of enterprise risk management (ERM). Financial institutions had pioneered this approach to risk management, spurred on by the regulator and rating agencies. So how could a very financial crisis, one that originated in banking’s subprime sector and spread to the credit, money and then capital markets, have occurred to such a systemically devastating effect?

While there have been many factors contributing to the financial crisis, the simple fact is that some degree of control over wider money (that is, credit) supply coupled with a rudimentary element of macro-prudential supervision would have reduced the scale of the crisis. Widespread regulatory failure, coupled with asymmetrical reward schemes in market participants, meant that some form of crisis was inevitable. As in the 1930s, policy mistakes by central banks and governments have deepened and maybe...


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Poll

Catastrophe bond issuance was $4.3bn in 2011. How much new issuance will there be in 2012?

Less than $3bn
0%
$3bn-$4bn
0%
$4bn-$5bn
0%
$5bn-$6bn
100%
$6bn-$7bn
0%
More than $7bn
0%

Quote

If last year was the year of the cat, then this year could be the year of the debt crisis.

Mike Van Slooten, head of international market analysis at Aon Benfield