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New companies with a market capitalization under USD 1 billion will now be able to opt-out of regulations within section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act for the first ten years after going public. This option was previously available to companies under USD 75 million.

Congressman Ben Quayle introduced the Startup Expansion and Investment Act to, “make it easier for emerging companies to access the capital necessary to expand and create jobs”. Quayle noted that removing one of the many regula

Lack of knowledge means more uncertainty means greater risk. Assumed knowledge can be even more dangerous than lack of knowledge and risk workshops are a safe haven for assumptions because of time limitations and dominant personalities. Here are four sources of assumptions with some tips on how to handle them during a risk workshop:

1. Seniority - When you have senior people in the room, too many people a ssume they are right, or will give them the benefit of any doubt in their mind because of th

Risk managers are charged with ensuring transparency, alignment, and forward looking views throughout the organization.  The way this is achieved is through risk assessments. 

Successful enterprise risk assessments can be a powerful tool for board and management level strategic decision making by connecting business activities to goals and identifying the risks that threaten to derail these strategic objectives.  An unsuccessful risk assessment is little more than a form over substance activity t

The FRM test date is coming up quickly, so Abara is offering free FRM practice questions & answers. Just follow @AbaraLearning on Twitter for daily practice questions from our FRM experts. Be sure to check in daily, we'll be posting answers the following day and new questions until the test date on November 19th.

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twitter.com/AbaraLearning

Businesses need to update carbon and climate change aspects of their risk management plans because many still have only basic contingency plans, which will be insufficient when the Federal Government’s proposed carbon scheme becomes law, says a renowned expert.

Tony Coleman is a non-executive director of Low Carbon Australia and was Insurance Australia Group's chief risk officer and chief actuary from 2000 to 2008. He was part of the 2006 Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, a member

We are undertaking some research into the primary challenges faced by insurance/reinsurance professionals and plan to prepare a series of informative white papers addressing the issues which we hope will be of great value to the community.

Key questions will include  

• What significant changes are occurring in your
       community?
• What are the major financial challenges faced by
       members of the community today?
• Have people in the community generally been
       successful in addressing these challenge

I envisage that we can by sometime next year (if we put our minds to it) create a self adjusting economy that needs little intervention and that can adjust to changing rates of inflation and other impacts much more easily than the economy that we have now.

To spell it out with forceful intent I called it Ingram's Law.

What is that?

It is the need to structure all of our debt instruments, taxes, accounting systems and stores of wealth in such a way that the economy stays in balance as average inc

In any case we need large tracts of Sovereign Debt as the basis for safer pensions and other critical savings. But there is a condition to be met...http://edward-ingram.blogspot.com/p/our-new-world.html

RMIA is proud to offer all GRC members the members discounted rate!

Earlybird closes tomorrow so register today!

www.rmiaconference.com

20-22 November 2011
Crown Towers, Melbourne

Strong line up for Chief Risk Officer Forum

Delegates will get a rare insight into what keeps chief risk officers awake at night on Tuesday, 22 November’s morning session. Moderator Greg d’Arville will tease out frank admissions from the panel on cutting-edge concepts like the new risk classifications of ‘simple’, ‘complex’

Reg. E ( specifically 205.11 Procedures for resolving errors
) as those in the business who know like to call it is, in short, the law gives
consumers protection and certain rights regarding claims of fraud and/ or
errors on their bank accounts.

When this provision was first
established, it was a victory for the honest consumer because some banking institutions
may have made it incumbent upon the consumer to prove they did not commit the
fraud reported in their accounts resulting in denial of their cla

In an earlier blog post, the idea of managing both quantity and quality of risk was introduced.  

But what exactly is Risk Quality?  

At the most simple level, risk quality can be indicated as the rate of risk per unit of activity.  

Risk Quantity = Business Activity Level x Risk Quality

So the suggestion is that a risk management system should pay close attention to that rate of risk as well as the Quantity of risk.  See Riskviews Post on risk quality for further discussion.  

But the risk manage

We've launched World Risk and Insurance News as a neutral online video news network for risk, insurance and financial service professionals. The plan is to have regular, even daily, programs with short video news and info segments from locations around the globe. How would you leverage World Risk and Insurance News (www.WRIN.tv) to better marketing and information-sharing efforts.?

I am doing research for an upcoming article I am writing on Business Model risk.  I would be interesting in hearing members' thoughts on the following:

1. Is this an activity that should only be confined to the Strategic Planning phase or is it a core activity of Risk Management ?

2. How do you identify businesses that are performing strongly but that may have a Business Model that is fundamentally flawed ?

3. What types of action can be taken to have Business Model risk debated.  The rise of subp

StratexSystems is running a series of 4 'How to' webinars around strategy and risk management. These events will be a combination of theory, based on the Risk-Based Performance Management approach, and technology.

Details are available at http://www.stratexsystems.com/stratexsystems-blog/2011/9/13/strategy-and-risk-how-to-webinar-series.html

I thought I would post a quick note about a recent blog post one of our clients wrote about their risk management initiative and the benefits it has brought.

In this post, the Head of Operational Risk talks about risk management becoming invisible in the organisation and the challenges of proving (to regulators) that risk management is been undertaken if indeed it does become invisible.

I think it is worth a read - http://www.hml.co.uk/blog/2011/09/23/risk-management-driving-value-from-a-long-game

In this month's newsletter I have expanded on how to incorporate risk appetite into strategy development using the Four Quarters Strategy Framework.  It contains a selection of high level considerations that can be debated at the strategy development phase.  

As most readers here will no doubt appreciate, risk management issues in many organisations across the globe - large and small - still continue to be raised after the strategic plan has been developed (and sometimes after it has been approv

In ancient times, the ultimate collateral was the debtor’s personal freedom. A person who defaulted on a debt became an indentured servant of the lender in the case of default. This idea persisted in one form or another until the 1800s when debtors prisons became out of favor. The US was one country that led the way on this movement. The US has always had a much easier attitude to bankruptcy. There has always been much less stigma attached to bankruptcy along with the easier legal climate.

So the