Concurrent Sessions

Risk Governance is an integral part of an effective ERM framework. The sessions in this track are designed to provide insight on a wide range of governance topics, including establishing an effective governance framework, practical experiences, risk appetite development, creating a risk culture, linking compensation and risk and governance from a regulatory perspective. Each of these sessions is designed to enhance one's understanding of risk governance activities and provide insight on emerging practices.

Risk identification serves as a first step in a prudent enterprise risk management cycle. This track offers an opportunity to learn about the state of risk identification across the various industries. In particular, this track will provide sessions that explore:

• emerging risk and the importance of early detection using state-of-the-art tools,
• the five common mistakes in risk identification that can derail an ERM process and how to avoid them,
• the use of risk models in identifying emerging risks and black swans,
• considerations that most risks manifest themselves not from any exogenous event, but rather from the behavior, perceptions, motivations, decisions and cultural views of human beings and
• how operational risk exacerbates the likelihood of fortuitous outcomes of contingent events.

Techniques for measuring risk continue to evolve in response to both the increasing ERM expectations of leading companies and the need to address the issues brought to light by the current financial crisis. This track of sessions will explore the development and use of a selection of advanced risk management models and measurement tools that support strategic and tactical decision-making across multiple industries.

Sessions will address:

• advancements in risk models and economic capital models,
• the measurement of risk concentrations, aggregations and correlations,
• individual risk quantification and aggregate enterprise risk exposure,
• the assessment of model fit and
• stress and scenario testing.

ERM is useless if it does not enhance the decisions made by those managing the firm. These sessions will focus on how ERM can be used to make good and better decisions and will feature speakers (from outside the financial services industries and within) who have successfully integrated ERM processes into their decision making. They will also feature experts in decision making who can educate attendees about how organizations incorporate risk perceptions in to their decision making and how these process can be improved. These sessions are expected to include lively debate.

Sessions in this track will explore the best practices and lessons learned in risk management. This track will look beyond the identification and quantification risks and delve into translating risk information into successful risk management. The sessions in this track will address:

• risk management lessons learned during the financial crisis,
• successful techniques employed by companies today and
• challenges management faces when dealing with risk.

The 2010 ERM Symposium seeks to offer a diversity of views and the research track will present research from the academic community. PRMIA and the ERM Institute International are jointly serving as scientific organizers of the research track. Three concurrent sessions will be offered within the research track. Authors will present their research and an industry discussant will remark on how the research may be applied in practice. Questions and comments from the audience will be encouraged to stimulate the discussion.

Sessions will address topics such as:

• a capital allocation based on solvency exchange option,
• an extreme value approach to hedging portfolio and
• the impact of correlation crises in risk theory.

Call for Papers - The 2010 ERM symposium highlights select innovative cutting edge papers that explore and advance risk management topics with a focus on the analysis and practical tools related to financial and operational risks, interaction between the risks (i.e., diversification benefits), integrated ERM, and ERM value creation.

Roundtables–Each of the tracks is rapidly evolving to better meet the needs of firms as they implement enterprise risk management. Join fellow attendees in this roundtable format as you become the speakers, share your knowledge and develop solutions to issues commonly faced by ERM practitioners on a variety of topics.

Moderator: Tom Fineis, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Presenters: Mike Batty, Deloitte Consulting LLP; Terri Dalenta, Aviva North America

Taking smart risks while avoiding excessive exposure has been a hot topic in the news since the phrase "subprime meltdown" entered our vernacular in 2007. If the financial crisis has revealed nothing else, it has shown that many organizations are yet to solve this problem. We believe creating a comprehensive risk appetite statement is a prerequisite for sound risk management. Only when firms endeavor to draft a high quality statement, and then clearly communicate this information to risk takers and managers throughout the organization, can they reasonably expect the risk profile to resemble expectations.

While the concept of risk appetite is well understood, many firms still struggle to codify it in a formal statement. In fact, 37% of the financial institutions surveyed in the sixth edition of Deloitte's worldwide Global Risk Management Survey reported that they either have no risk appetite statement, it is informal, or it is not approved by the board. This session will address this problem by describing a practical, step-by-step approach to developing a leading practice risk appetite statement for any industry.

Moderator/Presenter: Soubhagya Parija, Sterling Jewelers Inc.
Presenters: Jeff Vernor, Russell Investment Group; Russell McGuire, Alliance Data Systems

This session will cover the definition of emerging risks and the importance of early identification via the use of Bayesian Belief Networks in the context of a company or industry. The discussions will include demonstrations on how communication to top management becomes very effective taking this approach. Given that competitive advantage lies in addressing issues in a nimble and efficient manner, the session will include discussions on how enterprise risk managers can add value to organizations by helping them allocate resources appropriately in turning emerging risks into opportunities.

Moderator: TBD
Presenters: Sim Segal, Towers Watson

Most ERM programs have suboptimal methods for quantifying operational and strategic risks. Yet industry research shows that they represent more of a threat than financial risks. In this session, you will see new research on the source of risks and review the problems with traditional attempts to quantify operational and strategic risks. You will also learn about an emerging approach (with several case study examples) that companies are using to quantify operational and strategic risks in a way that drives decision–making.

Moderator: Kevin Madigan, Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, Inc.
Presenters: Carl Spetzler, Strategic Decisions Group; David Wong, CME Group

This session will discuss recent developments in the field of decision making. The focus will be on how decisions are made, how they should be made and strategies to optimize the use of ERM in the firm decision making process.

Moderator/Presenter: Paul Haley, Genworth
Presenters: Joe Rafson KPMG; Roger Chen, Ernst & Young LLP

The economic crisis of 2008-2009 has changed the way companies assess risk. The strain on asset portfolios has moved the focus from income to capital and liquidity. This session will focus on the challenges facing financial institutions and the techniques they are using to deal with liquidity.

Moderator: TBD
Presenter: Rick Gorvett, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This session discusses research into possible enterprise risk management applications of agent-based modeling (ABM) currently being performed at the University of Illinois. Using different ABM software environments, this research explores phenomena emerging from the behavior of, and nonlinear interrelationships among and between, individuals and firms in a competitive market economy. In particular, ABM-type bottom-up modeling has potential to help analyze and quantify operational risk, and can serve as a basis for examining and simulating strategic decision-making within organizations

Each of the tracks is rapidly evolving to better meet the needs of firms as they implement enterprise risk management. Join fellow attendees as you become the speakers and share your knowledge and develop solutions to issues that are commonly faced by ERM practitioners as risk identification topics are discussed in this roundtable format.

Moderator/Presenter: Paul Horgan, Price Waterhouse Coopers
Presenter: Gaurav Kapoor, MetricStream

The current economic crisis has revealed risk management vulnerabilities across different sectors but particularly within the financial services sector. Organizations are now facing a new set of risk challenges including questions about the scope and effectiveness of existing risk management practices. Often executive management is found to challenge the core assumptions of existing frameworks for risk management policies, procedures and methodologies.

Most organizations are looking at implementing integrative risk governance frameworks in order to minimize the inequitable distribution of risks and benefits between business units across the organization. This integrative framework will assist in anticipating major risk issues and improving the understanding and assessment of them with no ambiguities.

This session will highlight strategies for defining and adopting an integrated risk governance infrastructure leading to better risk management, improved decision making, high data quality, reduced task redundancies, etc. Such an approach will also align people, process, and technology towards achieving defined Corporate Objectives across the organization.

Moderator: TBD
Presenter: Sim Segal, Towers Watson

Since risk identification is the first step in the ERM process cycle, most assume that by now standard practice must be best practice, but this is not the case. Learn the five common mistakes that can derail an ERM process, and how to avoid them. In addition, this session uses a case study to highlight a significant risk faced by most ERM programs—having an incomplete program by neglecting non-financial risks. This uneven focus often leads to companies focusing on the wrong risk, over-mitigating some and under-mitigating others, incorrectly calculating their enterprise risk exposure, and resulting in sub-optimization of the risk-return profile.

Moderator: TBD
Presenters: Andrew Wunsch, Allstate; Luang Fu, State Auto Insurance Companies

In this session, two topics will be covered – preparing for the implications of a pandemic and concentration risk measures based on marginal PML at enterprise level.

The first topic will explore the recent emergence of the H1N1 influenza virus, on the heels of SARS and avian influenza incidents, has renewed interest in preparing for the implications of a pandemic. While pandemics fortunately do not occur regularly, the potential impact to financial services companies is significant in many areas including product liabilities, capital and solvency, business continuity, and basic services. The speaker will discuss various considerations in pandemic preparedness for a financial services company including:

• Product impact–life insurance/annuity, auto insurance frequencies, including capital & solvency
• Business continuity–staffing, critical processes, customer service, etc.
• A sample scenario illustrating impacts to the financial services industry and to the company, including ancillary effects from other industries.

For the second topic, the panelist will present several concentration risk measures based on marginal PML at enterprise level and will discuss the optimal de–concentration strategies under various business scenarios. A case study will follow to demonstrate the approaches. The property and casualty industry has experienced large catastrophe losses from property lines in recent years. A critical task of enterprise risk management is to measure the concentration risk and develop a strategy on geographic mix. A traditional method on concentration risk is to compare the market share of territories (or state, county, ZIP, agency). If market share is well above the average, it may represent a concentration risk. The market share approach provides a direct and straightforward measure of concentration. However, the measure does not directly reflect the right tails of insurance losses, which are the subject of interest in concentration analysis.

Moderator/Presenter: Max Rudolph, Rudolph Financial Consulting, LLC
Presenter: James Ramenda, Northington Partners Inc.

We will examine ERM from the perspective of how a company's strategic decisions are made and how these may drive the ERM process. In particular, we will discuss how different stakeholders and their various incentives influence strategic decision making. Parameters involved include growth targets, profitability targets, capital levels, risk tolerance and planning horizon. Stakeholders include chief executive officers, financial officers, employees, the board of directors, shareholders/owners, Wall Street analysts, credit rating agencies, regulators, agents and policyholders. Each of these is seeking a set of results from the company and these may conflict, currently or at some time in the future. Since the relative positions of each stakeholder may greatly influence the resolution of these conflicts, this can be a threat to sound ERM principles, whether reflected at the corporate, line of business or functional level. In this session, the speaker will discuss approaches for minimizing this threat.

Moderator/Presenter: Jeffrey Klanderman, KPMG
Presenter: John Esch, Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America; Thomas McIntyre, Towers Watson

Actuarial analysis has changed from making estimations based on extrapolation from a few data points to highly detailed demonstrations made by projection models utilizing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of data points. As companies look back over events of the past year and attempt to assess what happened, how many are looking at the development and functioning of their models as contributing to their problems?

Model risk is a subset of operational risk. This session explores how companies identify and address model risk in their processes. Have companies considered whether the models they use to quantify other elements of risk are providing appropriate answers and are these answers leading to appropriate downstream decision-making? You'll learn about relevant considerations that companies may think about, as well as some observations from the past 18 months in the insurance industry.

Moderator/Presenter: Neil Strauss, Neil T. Strauss Associates, LLC
Presenter: Jeffrey Brown, Promontory Financial Group

What were the causes of the worldwide financial crisis? Was there a breakdown related to risk management? Were simple rules of risk management broken or were overly complicated structures at fault or both? What was the worst - bad models, bad assumptions or bad human behavior? Was regulation the problem or is it the solution? Which statement more correctly describes the future–"things will never be the same” or “nothing in essence will change"? What lessons can be learned to help prevent the next crisis? The panel will discuss lessons to be learned from what transpired related to banks, bond insurers, rating agencies and insurers and will discuss how the financial landscape might shape up in the future.

Moderator: Fred Tavan
Presenters:
Dave Ingram; The Human Dynamics of the Insurance Cycle and Implications for Insurers
Russell Sears; The Fundamental Law of Risk Evaluation (FLoRE)
Adam Wadecki; The Economics of Enterprise Risk Management

The 2010 ERM symposium highlights select innovative cutting edge papers that explore and advance risk management topics with a focus on the analysis and practical tools related to financial and operational risks, interaction between the risks (i.e., diversification benefits), integrated ERM, and ERM value creation.

Moderator: Thomas McIntyre, Towers Watson
Presenters: Anand Borawake, TD Bank Financial Group; Drew Golfin, The Hartford; Steve Verney, Allstate Insurance Company

As companies continue to integrate ERM deeper into their organizations, economic capital allocation and risk/return attribution take on increased importance. The benefits of such a framework include consistent performance measurement across the organization, actionable insight that drives proactive decisions based on risk/return tradeoffs, and integration with the enterprise perspective with the objective of enhancing firm value. While this remains a noble goal of ERM, implementing change is difficult, so firms struggle to get there for various reasons. How do we address the roadblocks to reach our goal to drive enterprise-level value enhancement?

Presenters will discuss successes, challenges, and lessons learned from their experiences in developing an economic capital and risk/return framework and obtaining buy-in from management and across business units. The session will also include an interactive dialogue, where attendees will be encouraged to offer additional perspectives from similar work in their organizations.

Moderator: TBD
Presenter: Tom Hettinger, EMB America LLC

Risk models are always wrong. Some are useful. Assumptions that are not built into the model tend to be ignored. History really does not repeat itself. Or does it? Is it just that risk emerges in other forms? These and many more questions will be addressed. In addition, the panel will address the most important question of all:

Can one truly use modeling techniques in identifying emerging risks and "black swans"? Join us for enlightening discussion.

Moderator: Kevin Madigan, Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, Inc.
Presenters: Christopher Bohn, Aon Consulting; Eric Stocker, Genentech

Aon's pharmaceutical clients wished to better understand the risk of counterfeit and/or tampered-with drugs infiltrating their distribution chain and the associated costs and effect on company sales, market share and reputation. Aon developed a qualitative and quantitative modeling framework which allows us to simulate potential counterfeit and tampering events and evaluate the impact to our clients.

The model combines an assessment of various risk drivers such as supply chain vulnerability, loss history and competition together with an evaluation of the economic impact based on recall costs, lost market share, product liability losses, shareholder lawsuit, and other potentially relevant variables. This model delivers additional value by comparing the effectiveness of various mitigation options that the client considers implementing, thus providing a company-wide, global decision-making framework.

Moderator: Kevin Madigan, Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, Inc.
Presenters: John Beckman, CNA Insurance Companies; John Wengler, Entergy

This session will focus on successful and unsuccessful case studies in which ERM was implemented into the decision making context. The session will cover lessons learned regarding what has worked and what has not.

Moderator: Rurik Magos , GNP
Presenter: Juan Carlos Velasco, GNP

A risk–based regulatory and management framework is being adopted in several countries around the world. This panel will illustrate the implementation of such a framework, with emphasis on optimizing decision-making, giving practical.

Presenters: John Burkett, FCAS, MAAA, PhD Jennifer Cheslawski, ACAS, MAAA Gerald Kirschner, FCAS, MAAA Timothy J Pratt, FIAA, MAAA Diana Rangelova, Member, French Institute of Actuaries

Enterprise risk management and its holistic approach appear to have attained permanency as a best-in-class approach to risk management. Yet, we continue to see insurers utilizing risk limits that have been set in isolation and remain untested from an enterprise-wide perspective. Explanations range from "our conservative approach to setting individual risk limits renders the holistic approach unnecessary" to "we simply don't have the resources to tackle this problem." In our paper, we demonstrate that not thinking holistically leads to sub-optimal decision making and, with the availability of introductory tools such as Dynamo (aka the public access DFA model), resource constraints should not be seen as a valid reason for not doing ERM.

Each of the tracks is rapidly evolving to better meet the needs of firms as they implement enterprise risk management. Join fellow attendees as you become the speakers and share your knowledge and develop solutions to issues that are commonly faced by ERM practitioners as risk identification topics are discussed in this roundtable format.

Moderator: Nancy Bennett, American Academy of Actuaries
Presenter: David Sandberg, Allianz Life Insurance Co of North America

In the wake of the financial crisis, it has become clear that real reform will necessitate some fundamental changes to our regulatory framework for the financial services industry. The current regulatory framework resembles a patchwork quilt of regulations, resulting in overlapping oversight as well as unregulated products and transactions. A modern regulatory framework must be built on a foundation of sound risk management principles. How can our regulatory framework be designed to leverage an institution's ERM practices? Are regulators equipped to oversee how companies manage the risks they face? How can risk management and public policy intersect most effectively? This session will examine these questions and others related today's dynamic regulatory environment.

Moderator: TBD
Presenter: Max Rudolph, Rudolph Financial Consulting LLC

Panelists will review the various tools, surveys, methodologies and procedures that can be used to help identify risks at companies, especially those more operational and strategic in nature. How can one integrate the use of Delphi techniques, expert opinion, risk maps, simulations and other tools in the interest of forming a comprehensive identification of the risks a company faces? In addition, one of the panelists will present the annual emerging risk project completed by the SOA/CAS/CIA Joint Risk Management Section.

Moderator: TBD
Presenters: Mike Dorsel, AEGON USA Inc; Patricia Matson, Deloitte Consulting; Curt Burmeister

Designing and implementing an effective enterprise-wide risk management and economic capital system is a challenging task. This session will include topics such as:

• replicating portfolios,
• curve fitting,
• generating and calibrating economic scenarios,
• risk aggregation via copulas,
• creating effective controls for internal and external audit and
• winning internal buy-in from the firm's business units.

Participants will learn how insurance companies are moving from the whiteboard to implementation. Speakers will detail the practical ways taken to tackle the challenges and will provide their insight on how to successfully build and roll out an effective risk and economic capital management system.

Moderator: Alexander Shipilov, TD Bank Financial Group
Presenters: Aaron Halpert, KPMG Actuarial Services; Chris Nyce, KPMG LLP

The recent evolution of risk management has shown that the integration of the ERM framework and ECM models are critical for an organization's overall risk management. Speakers will discuss how IRPM can leverage both risk and performance management into a coordinated approach to company management and decision making. They will also review applications such as strategic planning, evaluation of business strategies, business planning cycles and evaluation of opportunities. In addition, the session will include approaches for companies to link their business strategy to the risk and capital management framework. This presentation will be of interest to those organizations that have either already implemented ERM or ECM or those envisioning or designing new or revised ERM or ECM approaches. It is also for companies that anticipate coming under the regulatory regime of Solvency II and the associated "use test." As insurers are gearing up for the Solvency II initiative in Europe, regulators are expecting to see firms embed this risk-based process into how they run their businesses. As a result, companies need to start now to pilot the integration of performance and risk-based processes.

Moderator: TBD
Presenters: Brian Rhodes, Quantitative Risk Management; France Panneton, Sun Life

This session will address the questions and challenges that companies face. The topics will include: organizational structure, assessment and quantification of risk and future state expectations. This session will also include results from an industry survey of chief risk officers.

Moderator: Phil Ferrari, SMART Business
Presenters: Ellen Walsh, PriceWaterhouseCooper; Michael Leboeuf, SMART Business Advisory and Consulting; Tim Kelly, Country Financial

Implementing an ERM strategy for the smaller company can be a formidable task. Resource, time and budget constraints can significantly impede an effective implementation How can the smaller company leverage its existing unique capabilities to integrate ERM? Can risk management strategies be utilized—without the need for an excessive strain on resources, time or budgets—that can help a smaller company move toward an ERM solution?

Speakers on this panel will present real life ERM implementation struggles and success stories, as well as alternate strategies for mitigating risk through, for example through product development and reinsurance solutions.

Presenters:
Edward Sun; Bayesian Risk Aggregation: Correlation Uncertainty and Expert Judgment
B. John Manistre; A Cost of Capital Approach to Extrapolating and Implied Volatility Surface
Gary Venter; Advances in Modeling of Financial Series

The 2010 ERM symposium highlights select innovative cutting edge papers that explore and advance risk management topics with a focus on the analysis and practical tools related to financial and operational risks, interaction between the risks (i.e., diversification benefits), integrated ERM, and ERM value creation.

Moderator/Presenter: Karen DeToro, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Presenter: Bill O'Connor, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Incentive compensation plans have been subject to increased scrutiny in the wake of the financial crisis. Companies have begun to recognize that incentive compensation plans may actually increase a company's risk, either by paying out financial rewards that are misaligned with risk, or by incentivizing individuals to increase risk-taking activities beyond a company's risk appetite in an attempt to maximize their compensation. In summer 2009, the SEC released guidance on incentive compensation disclosures in an attempt to increase transparency around these issues.

In this presentation, we focus on ways that boards and management can better understand the risks inherent in their incentive compensation plans through stress testing and modeling approaches. These approaches have been used to understand and assess risk in other contexts; it is a natural extension to apply them to compensation plans by evaluating the financial impacts of these plans under a variety of risky scenarios. This kind of stress testing can help companies gain the transparency required to comply with the SEC guidance. Additionally, we will discuss different risk-adjusted metrics that companies may wish to consider using in their incentive compensation plans, and how these metrics can better align risks and rewards. Finally, we will discuss the practical implications of introducing these approaches to a company's compensation plan.

Moderator/Presenter: Dave Ingram, Willis Re Inc
Presenter: Michael Thompson

Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on the cultural views of risk and role it plays in our society at large. Prudent risk identification techniques require the consideration that risk manifests itself not only from any exogenous events, but also from the perceptions, biases, reactions and ultimately on the decisions of people. In this session, panelists will discuss the motivations, cultural views, and behavioral biases of people and their effect on the enterprise risk management process.

Moderator: TBD
Presenter: Stuart Hayes, Towers Watson

With the subprime credit crisis and ensuing economic crisis, counterparty risk has become a central issue in evaluating financial transactions. For many property and casualty insurance and reinsurance organizations, reinsurance counterparty risk represents the largest source of potential bad debt exposure. Traditional methods of evaluating this risk may fall short of rating agencies' and companies' internal needs. A more sophisticated and credit-based approach is possible using a stochastic simulation approach, based on information readily available from the bond market.

The session will provide an overview of a transition matrix/recovery rate approach to evaluating reinsurance counterparty risk. Assumptions and parameter issues involving base-case and stressed scenarios will be discussed and a numerical example provided to enhance understanding of the methodology. Presenters from primary companies who have evaluated their counterparty risk using this methodology could optionally be included to provide a real-world application standpoint. Another source of potentially valuable viewpoints would be representatives from appropriate rating agencies (AM Best, S&P, Moody's).

Moderator: Curt Burmeister, Algorithmics
Presenters: Andrew Aziz, Algorithmics; Mark Prindiville, Allstate

The recent market turmoil has focused attention on the question of how to best understand, manage and mitigate risk. One of the common criticisms of risk management is that it produces a lot of detailed reports, but rarely provides portfolio and risk managers with any concrete steps to take to effectively manage risk. During the past several years, leading firms have successfully evolved their risk functions away from pure risk measurement and monitoring and have begun to feed output into risk-based decision frameworks that directly drive performance results. This session will appeal to risk professionals and investment managers within the asset management, pension fund and insurance industries and will focus on the incorporation of advanced risk metrics into the investment process. The session will provide insight into how these firms are looking at risk and the techniques they are using. Topics include:

• evaluation of hedging strategies,
• integration of stress test output,
• what-if trade analysis,
• liability-driven investing and
• advanced optimization and portfolio replication.

Moderator/Presenter: Jason Alleyne, GGY
Presenters: Frank Zhang, Ernst & Young; Karen Detoro, D&T

In the wake of recent economic challenges, companies are faced with balancing value creation with risk management. The renewed interest in risk mitigation has an impact on the value creation and profitability of financial institutions. This session will cover how companies stay competitive, limit risk exposure and add value to their organization.

Moderator: TBD
Presenters: Basil Rabinowitz, Assurant, Inc.; Matthew Peters, Allstate; Sim Segal, Towers Watson

This session describes modeling methods successfully used to quantify aggregate enterprise risk exposure and inform development of risk appetite.

Moderator: Al Weller
Presenters:
Neil Allan; Phylogenetic Approaches
Neil Bodoff; Discarding Risk Avoidance and Embracing Risk Optimization: Managing Reinsurance Credit Risk
Noel Harewood; Rethinking Fixed Deferred Annuities: Applying a Risk-Based Economic Value Approach

The 2010 ERM symposium highlights select innovative cutting edge papers that explore and advance risk management topics with a focus on the analysis and practical tools related to financial and operational risks, interaction between the risks (i.e., diversification benefits), integrated ERM, and ERM value creation.

Moderator: TBD
Presenter: Michael Rasmussen, Corporate Integrity, LLC

This session will review the importance of having a risk management culture. Risk cultures have a significant impact on the risk profile and the risk events of an organization. The governance framework assists in the creation of that culture or supports its continuation. Speakers will discuss the importance of management support and acknowledgement in the creation of a culture, along with the difficulties of creating a risk-based culture, especially if it is counter to the historical culture of the organization.

Moderator: Robert Wolf, Society of Actuaries
Presenter: Ali Samad-Khan, Stamford Risk Analytics LLC

The recent global financial crisis can be traced to several large operational failures occurring simultaneously. Operational risk essentially exacerbates all other risks (like a domino effect). The panelists, representing a research team sponsored by the Joint Risk Management Section of the SOA/CAS/CIA, will discuss the recently published comprehensive research report regarding the effective management of operational risk. In the report, the researchers define operational risk as the risk of loss from operational failure, which includes system failures, acts of nature, inadvertent execution errors and excessive risk taking, among several other actions and inactions. Join us in a thought-provoking discussion as the panelists discuss the identification of these risks by going beyond the traditional audit-based approach to an evolved, holistic, top-down approach with tactical and strategic implications, which is less resource intensive.

Moderator: TBD
Presenter: Maryellen Coggins, PricewaterhouseCoopers

Moderator/Presenters: Kevin Madigan, Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, Inc.
Presenters: John Tierney, Karen Clark & Company; Nathan Schwartz, TigerRisk Partners

The risk of significant loss to property from catastrophic events is a major concern to many industry sectors; P&C insurers, Life insurers, energy companies, institutional investors and manufacturers (to name but a few) all have material exposure to loss from these events. The measurement and management of property catastrophe risk is the major component of ERM for many companies, and there are several differing and contradictory approaches to managing this risk. Furthermore, catastrophe models have been in wide use for at least 15 years; we have experience using these models to make decisions regarding risk management.

This session shall address the following questions:

• Context clearly matters when managing catastrophe risk, but are there any general rules or ideas that always apply? Can we make any generalizations or are all “solutions” firm specific?
• Are there any lessons learned from managing catastrophe risk that can be generalized to the broader question of the proper role of models in strategic decision making? Do decision makers understand the proper role of models in the strategic decision making process?
• Many firms are under intense pressure from outside sources regarding the management of property catastrophe risk. Is this pressure causing firms to take self destructive actions?
• What obvious improvements can be made to the processes currently employed? Which of the approaches in use today should be avoided and which should be emulated?
• What does the above tell us about the likelihood of ERM fulfilling its promise?

Moderator/Presenter: Joe Lebens, Towers Watson
Presenter: Linda Chase-Jenkins, Towers Watson

External stakeholders are increasingly demanding evidence of clear boundaries and guideposts that inform the nature and amount of risk an organization undertakes. However, risk appetite definition is often overlooked as the critical and foundational first step to shaping risk management strategy and establishing clear parameters for everyday decision making.

We will explore the challenges that have prevented wider acceptance of this aspect of ERM. The discussion will cover the principles of risk appetite, including:

• How to articulate risk appetite, risk tolerance and risk limits
• Board and management perspectives
• Rating agency perspectives
• Important considerations for modeling and metrics
• Linking risk appetite to the business.

The 2010 ERM Symposium seeks to offer a diversity of views and the research track will provide research from the academic community. Authors will present their research and an industry discussant will remark on how the research may be applied in practice. Questions and comments from the audience will be encouraged to stimulate the discussion. PRMIA and ERM International Institute are jointly serving as scientific organizers of the research track.

Each of the tracks is rapidly evolving to better meet the needs of firms as they implement enterprise risk management. Join fellow attendees as you become the speakers and share your knowledge and develop solutions to issues that are commonly faced by ERM practitioners as risk identification topics are discussed in this roundtable format.

Presented by:

And in collaboration with: