Risk.net: OpRisk North America highlights the limitations of risk management

Good summary of recent OpRisk North America on Risk.net. Sample quote:

Mark Levonian, senior deputy comptroller for economics at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in Washington, DC, opened the conference with his keynote speech on the morning of March 21 (the previous day had been devoted to technical seminars). He cautioned operational risk managers against relying too much on risk models.

“Op risk models should be a key part of the risk management process, but we have to ask ourselves whether the models are wrong. The use of models is crucial to good risk management today, but sometimes even the best models don’t work the way they are supposed to. In fact, all models don’t work sometimes. The risk that the models won’t work – model risk – is an operational risk in itself, and is a risk that has to be actively managed,” said Levonian.