How To Stabilize Financial Markets Before EMU ?

A recent report from the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) has advocated that fixed conversion rates for the start of EMU should be preannounced as soon as possible. The aim of this short paper is to focus on the potential dangers of such a decision. Indeed, the CEPR report propositions are based on the idea that, roughly speaking, fixing a conversion rate in advance should stabilize the exchange rate markets now. We show that this intuition is misleading: knowing the price of an asset at some point in the future has never meant that its current price has a low volatility. Moreover, we perform some simulations to evaluate how volatile exchange rate markets should have been for the past few months if such a rule had been announced. Finally, we provide a constructive proof of what a stabilizing rule should look like.EMU Finance Exchange rate

Do Financial Markets Expect a Significant Delay before EMU ?

This short note shows that there exists a simple relation between the private ECU, its theoretical value and the associated interest rates. From this relation, one can estimate the time to EMU as expected by financial markets and see whether this time is consistent with a monetary union taking place on January 1, 1999.EMU ECU

The Correlation Problem in Operational Risk

This paper demonstrates that aggregate losses are necessarily low as long as we remain under the standard assumptions of LDA models. Moreover empirical findings show that the correlation between two aggregate losses is typically below 5%, which opens a wide scope for large diversification effects, much larger than those the Basel Committee seems to have in mind. In other words, summing up capital charges is in substantial contradiction with the type of correlation consistent with the standard LDA model

Implementing Loss Distribution Approach for Operational Risk

To quantify the operational risk capital charge under the current regulatory framework for banking supervision, referred to as Basel II, many banks adopt the Loss Distribution Approach. There are many modeling issues that should be resolved to use the approach in practice. In this paper we review the quantitative methods suggested in literature for implementation of the approach. In particular, the use of the Bayesian inference method that allows to take expert judgement and parameter uncertainty into account, modeling dependence and inclusion of insurance are discussed

Should the insurance industry be banking on risk escalation for solvency II?

Basel II introduced a three pillar approach which concentrated upon new capital ratios (Pillar I), new supervisory procedures (Pillar II) and demanded better overall disclosure to ensure effective market discipline and transparency. Importantly, it introduced operational risk as a standalone area of the bank which for the first time was required to be measured, managed and capital allocated to calculated operational risks. Concurrently, Solvency II regulation in the insurance industry was also re-imagining regulations within the insurance industry and also developing operational risk measures. Given that Basel II was first published in 2004 and Solvency II was set to go live in January 2014. This paper analyses the strategic challenges of Basel II in the UK banking sector and then uses the results to inform a survey of a major UK insurance provider. We report that the effectiveness of Basel II was based around: the reliance upon people for effective decision making; the importance of good training for empowerment of staff; the importance of Board level engagement; and an individual's own world view and perceptions influenced the adoption of an organizational risk culture. We then take the findings to inform a survey utilizing structural equation modelling to analyze risk reporting and escalation in a large UK insurance company. The results indicate that attitude and uncertainty significantly affect individual's intention to escalate operational risk and that if not recognized by insurance companies and regulators will hinder the effectiveness of Solvency II implementation