Value-at-risk (VAR)

Asia Risk 15: Kenji Fujii, Mizuho Securities

Japanese financial institutions have faced severe tests during the past 15 years including rogue trading scandals, huge non-performing loans and a need to adopt aggressive regulatory rules. Kenji Fujii maps out these challenges and indicates how they…

How to make VAR go voom

An amended approach to value-at-risk that focuses on the drivers of risk and the use of agent-based modelling and simulation to capture the bounded rationality of human decision-making

Q&A: Endesa’s Jaime Roman on mergers

Jaime Roman, head of risk management at Spanish utility Endesa, talks to Katie Holliday about the attitudes to risk management in Europe from the perspective of a major European utility operating in the growing Iberian markets

When market and credit risk collide

The financial crisis highlighted that interactions between market risk and credit risk could expose banks to greater risks than had been assumed. Banks are responding by altering their structure and the models they use – but it is by no means an easy…

Capturing fat tails

Financial institutions are more aware of the risks posed by high-impact events since the crisis, but the question is how to encapsulate these in models. Zari Rachev, Boryana Racheva-Iotova and Stoyan Stoyanov discuss three approaches for capturing fat…

What does VAR mean in 2010?

Value-at-risk figures fell across the industry in 2009, while exceptions dropped significantly from levels in 2007 and 2008. But discussion over what VAR figures actually show and how the numbers are interpreted by senior management continues. By…

A sting in the tail

After recent financial turmoil, market participants are thinking much more rigorously about ways to protect themselves against the possibility of rare but extreme events. However, effectively hedging tail risk is not straightforward. By Mark Pengelly

Summing up VAR

There are a number of approaches to building the IT systems architecture required for historical simulation value-at-risk implementations. What are the pros and cons associated with these architectures? And why does the risk-aggregator approach overcome…

Pass the microphone: Humphreys to Strickland

In this new column, an industry professional interviews a market expert of their choice. Next month the interviewee becomes the interviewer and chooses who to interview. The series is kicked off by Brett Humphreys putting his questions to Lacima Group’s…