a risk manager’s journal of the plague year
by Elisabeth A. Wilson & Sunil K. Kansal abstract The aim of this article is to share the key learning experiences from the challenges presented by COVID-19 that Risk Managers have had to accept and live through.
how it all begins Last New Year’s Eve, one of us proposed a toast, a final farewell message to 2020. It was brief and succinct. It was heartfelt. And it was worded in the strongest possible terms. Our grandmothers would have blushed. But like everyone (who may have toasted out the old year in a similar fashion), we despised 2020—a year so terrible it felt like it actually encompassed two years, with the month of March serving as the great divide between the normal, daily grind and the dissent into a dystopian hell. Great change often fosters great upheaval. The COVID-19 Pandemic has not only ushered in the most striking physical and mental health crisis of our age, but it has caused widespread
concern and economic hardship for consumers, businesses, and communities across the world. One of the immediate effects of the pandemic felt by the banking industry triggered from retail clients, and then, slowly, credit risk stemming from corporate clients materialized. The pandemic necessitated that banks make liquidity assistance available quickly and readily to their clients to keep them afloat. The challenging task was how to ensure related processing times were kept at a minimum, customers did not face any hardship, information could be exchanged electronically, all while ensuring internal controls were not bypassed.
risk challenges presented by the situation As we mentally prepared for ever more depressing news to come on the television, it struck us that, suddenly, we all now had to conduct our day-to-day work from home. Abruptly, the banking operating model was in dire need of change, such as the re-configuration of tasks, processes, and management of the remote workforce, to address and meet the services customers expected banking institutions to deliver.
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Intelligent Risk - April 2021
