Risk ManagementTreasury Management
June 25, 2020

What the Experiment With Modern Monetary Theory Means for Risk Managers

Treasury and finance teams need to adapt to the reality of different thinking about debt and deficits. By Joseph Neu“We’re not even thinking about thinking about raising rates,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said after the Federal Open Market Committee’s June meeting. This was good timing for me: On the same day, I suggested to clients of Chatham Financial attending a virtual summit that among the accelerating trends treasury and financial risk managers need to prepare for is the current flirtation with…
Accounting & DisclosureComplianceCOVID-19Treasury Management
June 4, 2020

Smooth Sailing: One Investment Manager’s Painless Adoption of CECL

Taking a qualitative approach and doing no discounted cash flow calculations produced a calm CECL debut for at least one investment manager.At a recent NeuGroup meeting, the only investment manager whose company adopted the new accounting standard for estimating credit losses in the first quarter described a relatively painless process, giving comfort to some of his peers. The meeting, sponsored by BlackRock, included a presentation by Aladdin on FASB’s current expected credit losses (CECL) methodology. Aladdin offers risk management software…
Risk ManagementTechnology
May 21, 2020

Aligning Risks to Inculcate Risk Awareness

How one company’s ERM team is raising risk awareness and its own profile by organizing the firm’s sprawling risks.Sometimes the best way to add importance to your function is to look to the top. To management, that is. This was what one company’s enterprise risk management team did to accomplish two things: help organize the company’s risks and add a level of seriousness to the function itself.The head of this ERM team recently described, at NeuGroup’s Corporate ERM Group’s annual meeting,…
COVID-19Risk Management
April 14, 2020

“Too Soon” Is Now “Let’s Do It”: Risk Managers Start Planning for Life Beyond COVID

Up until about a week ago, companies were so busy handling the immediate issues related to COVID-19, they were putting off thinking of future risks. Enterprise risk management professionals are paid to look into the future and help companies prepare for it. But COVID-19 changed all that. “Too soon,” was the answer from most members of NeuGroup’s ERM peer group two weeks ago when we asked them about post-pandemic planning and their thoughts about the future. One member back then…
COVID-19Treasury Management
March 5, 2020

What Should Treasury and Finance Functions Be Doing About the Coronavirus?

Something that warrants a rare FOMC inter-meeting rate cut calls for broader finance engagement. There is a lot of information, advice and checklists coming out on how businesses should respond to the coronavirus, or COVID-19. This one from McKinsey is a good example.  Health and safety first. A majority of companies, rightly, start with the most important steps to ensure the health and safety of employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. Tabletop crisis response and planning. The next most important item tends to be the crisis…
Risk Management
March 3, 2020

How to Convince Business Units That ERM Has Real Value

Integrating it with strategic planning shifts perceptions that ERM is a bureaucratic exercise. Enterprise risk management (ERM) is often viewed by business leaders as a check-the-box exercise that interferes with the profit engines they’re seeking to run. A treasurer at a recent NeuGroup meeting who also chairs his company’s risk committee sought advice on how to convince the leaders of business units and other corporate entities that the ERM process adds value. Ed Scott, senior executive advisor at NeuGroup and…
Treasury Management
January 10, 2020

Making Better Use of Data to Manage Risk

Cognitive risk sensing identifying and mitigating risk into dynamic process. Cognitive risk sensing (CRS) is said to be the next frontier in terms of analyzing risk and addressing it in a dynamic fashion. But the approach, which should be especially helpful for internal audit (IA) and other risk functions, is still in its infancy for most organizations. Neil White, risk and financial advisory principal and global internal audit analytics leader at Deloitte, said organizations have used structured data from areas…