It was a blast being Kimberley Cole‘s right-hand Risky Woman at #RiskLive in London last week. Below are a few highlights from the thirty or so pages of notes I took:
💡 We are in a period of “superior innovation” according to Burkhard P. Varnholt, a roaring 20’s bull market, where productivity gains are borne out of a post-pandemic labour shortage. He thinks that the greatest risk for an investor would be to “run for the hills” and that we should “stay invested at all times”.
💡 Even before the events over the weekend, last week’s panel on geopolitics talked about the “very real” risk that the US could get drawn into the Middle East conflict. They didn’t know how right they were.
💡 The watchword of the week was geopolitics. “We are in a new reality shaped by geopolitics” noted Anna Rosenberg, “and people are not educated in the consequences of their actions”
💡Critical third parties such as cloud providers are getting to grips with being audited by the PRA, FCA and even HMT for operational resilience. While they usually have audit and risk functions, they’re not typically laid out like a bank with three lines of defence. How will they respond to the regulatory scrutiny they’re facing into?
💡 While AI provides much opportunity in the world of credit risk, we will still need humans in the loop for at least another 10-15 years, according to Prometeia. However, to make use of AI meaningfully, you need to provide context to your models.
💡 What will happen with Basel III? As Europe finalises its approach, the UK has delayed implementation to 2027, and the US – who knows? 🤷🏻♀️ Does this make Basel look less like a global regulation and more like a “coalition of the willing” to quote one audience member?
💡 According to the Bank of England, we will spend $190bn on AI by 2030 in the UK, but in doing so, will remove $1trn in costs from the system.
💡 In the best talk of the conference, Tim Mason of Deutsche Bank outlined how they are creating a programme for approving the use of AI, and constantly creating precedents, in order to give their developers more certainty and autonomy when embarking on projects. He also talked about what they won’t use it for…
💡 And finally, on the subject of women, allyship and influence, Vivienne Artz OBE FCSI (Hon) CMgr CCMI AIGP and Kimberley Cole discussed how women are more optimistic than their male counterparts about the potential ROI from digital disruption, and far less concerned than men about remote working.
Risky Women is a network for women working in risk. We signed up a bunch of new members during the conference. If you’d like to learn more about it, check out https://www.riskywomen.org
