Von der Münze zum Smartphone : Bezahlkultur im Wandel ; Sicherheit und Bequemlichkeit sind bei der Entwicklung neuer Zahlungsmittel die entscheidenden Faktoren

Die Rechnung kommt immer zum Schluss – und sie zu bezahlen, macht in der Regel keine Freude. Wenn wir aber schon eher ungern bezahlen, soll die Zahlungsmethode selbst wenigstens einfach, überall verfügbar und sehr sicher sein. Insbesondere die Sicherheit ist beim Bezahlen im 21. Jahrhundert ein wichtiges Thema, zu dem es interdisziplinäre Forschungsansätze aus Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Informatik und Recht in einem von dynamischer Entwicklung geprägten Umfeld gibt

Risk Culture during the Last 2000 Years—From an Aleatory Society to the Illusion of Risk Control

The culture of risk is 2000 years old, although the term “risk” developed much later. The culture of merchants making decisions under uncertainty and taking the individual responsibility for the uncertain future started with the Roman “Aleatory Society”, continued with medieval sea merchants, who made business “ad risicum et fortunam”, and sustained to the culture of entrepreneurs in times of industrialisation and dynamic economic changes in the 18th and 19th century. For all long-term commercial relationships, the culture of honourable merchants with personal decision-making and individual responsibility worked well. The successful development of sciences, statistics and engineering within the last 100 years led to the conjecture that men can “construct” an economical system with a pre-defined “clockwork” behaviour. Since probability distributions could be calculated ex-post, an illusion to control risk ex-ante became a pattern in business and banking. Based on the recent experiences with the financial crisis, a “risk culture” should understand that human “Strength of Knowledge” is limited and the “unknown unknown” can materialise. As all decisions and all commercial agreements are made under uncertainty, the culture of honourable merchants is key to achieve trust in long-term economic relations with individual responsibility, flexibility to adapt and resilience against the unknown

Risk Culture and the Role Model of the Honorable Merchant

The current discussion about a “risk culture” in financial services was triggered by the recent series of financial crises. The last decade saw a long list of hubris, misconduct and criminal activities by human beings on a single or even a collective basis in banks, in the industry or in the whole economy. As a counter-reaction, financial authorities called for a guidance by a “new” risk culture in financial institutions based on a set of abstract, formal, and normative governance processes. While traditional risk research in economics and in banking was focused on the statistical aspects of risk as the probability of loss multiplied by the amount of loss, culture is a paraphrase for the behavior in collectives and dynamics of organization found in human societies. Therefore, a “risk culture” should link the normative concepts of risk with the positive “real-world” decision-making in financial services. This paper will describe a novel view on “risk culture” from the perspective of human beings interacting in dynamical and intertemporal commercial relations. In this context “risk” is perceived by economic agents ex−ante as the consequence of the time lag between the present and the uncertain future development (compared to a probability distribution calculated by observers ex−post). For all those individual decisions—to be made under uncertainty—future “risk” includes the so-called “normal accidents”, i.e., failures that will happen at some uncertain point in time but are inevitable, and the only questions are when failure will happen and how to maintain function in the first line of defense. Finally, the shift from an abstract definition of “risk” as a probability distribution to a role model of “honorable merchants” as a benchmark for significant individual decision-making with individual responsibilities for the uncertain future outcome provides a new framework to discuss the responsibilities in the financial industry

Active management of operational risk in the regimes of the "unknown": What can machine learning or heuristics deliver?

Advanced machine learning has achieved extraordinary success in recent years. “Active” operational risk beyond ex post analysis of measured-data machine learning could provide help beyond the regime of traditional statistical analysis when it comes to the “known unknown” or even the “unknown unknown.” While machine learning has been tested successfully in the regime of the “known,” heuristics typically provide better results for an active operational risk management (in the sense of forecasting). However, precursors in existing data can open a chance for machine learning to provide early warnings even for the regime of the “unknown unknown.

Risk Culture and the Role Model of the Honorable Merchant

The current discussion about a “risk culture” in financial services was triggered by the recent series of financial crises. The last decade saw a long list of hubris, misconduct and criminal activities by human beings on a single or even a collective basis in banks, in the industry or in the whole economy. As a counter-reaction, financial authorities called for a guidance by a “new” risk culture in financial institutions based on a set of abstract, formal, and normative governance processes. While traditional risk research in economics and in banking was focused on the statistical aspects of risk as the probability of loss multiplied by the amount of loss, culture is a paraphrase for the behavior in collectives and dynamics of organization found in human societies. Therefore, a “risk culture” should link the normative concepts of risk with the positive “real-world” decision-making in financial services. This paper will describe a novel view on “risk culture” from the perspective of human beings interacting in dynamical and intertemporal commercial relations. In this context “risk” is perceived by economic agents ex−ante as the consequence of the time lag between the present and the uncertain future development (compared to a probability distribution calculated by observers ex−post). For all those individual decisions—to be made under uncertainty—future “risk” includes the so-called “normal accidents”, i.e., failures that will happen at some uncertain point in time but are inevitable, and the only questions are when failure will happen and how to maintain function in the first line of defense. Finally, the shift from an abstract definition of “risk” as a probability distribution to a role model of “honorable merchants” as a benchmark for significant individual decision-making with individual responsibilities for the uncertain future outcome provides a new framework to discuss the responsibilities in the financial industry