OCC: We must continue to improve risk management in the markets
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OCC: We must continue to improve risk management in the markets 09 November 2018Chicago Reporter: Jenna Lomax
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“To continue improving risk management in the markets, [the industry] must support a principled approach to reducing regulatory arbitrage on an international level”, according to John Fennell, OCC’s executive vice president and chief risk officer.
In a recent blog, Fennell said this principled approach should involve “evaluating the consistency with which international regulations have been adopted at a national level”.
Fennell further indicated: “We should work with regulators on the importance of aligning central bank access for Systemically Important Financial Market Utilities (SIFMUs) in the US with that of their European counterparts.”
He said these principles should be carried out to avoid another market crash, such as the Financial Crash of 2008, as he questioned: “Are we more prepared to withstand the next crisis when it happens?”
Fennell added: “As the foundation for secure markets, we at OCC always have to consider extreme events. At least some degree of liquidity risk will be with us for as long as there are financial markets. That's why OCC is always striving to improve our resiliency and be prepared for the what-if events—no matter how unlikely they may seem.”
To further reduce regulatory arbitrage, Fennell added: “We should identify opportunities to align policy with risk reduction at a systemic level and promote incentives to support commercial or utility-based alternatives to enhance all SIFMUs' access to high-quality liquidity alternatives.”
Fennell said that the OCC’s Financial Safeguards Framework “builds on the previous enhancements to our financial resources and resiliency as a SIFMU”.
“Indeed, over the last several years, we have significantly expanded and diversified our access to liquidity.”
Since before the 2008 Financial Crisis, Fennell said the emphasis of risk management leaned more toward credit risk—with liquidity being a secondary concern.
However, during the crisis, it became clear liquidity risk was an accelerant toward the ultimate default of a market participant.
Fennell said the most obvious risk event is the failure of a counterparty, but the varying ways in which defaults could occur does present challenges.
“Defaults can happen within a single legal entity, across related entities or even simultaneously with multiple counterparties. However, it cannot be assumed that more defaults are necessarily worse, as these scenarios can have both positive and negative impacts on the counterparty's liquidity risk profile, so all combinations and correlations must be considered.”
He added: “For instance, failures can occur with clearing firms or with a bank where liquidity resources are in custody, preventing access to them.”
Fennell reiterated that a SIFMU like OCC is critical to the “continuous functioning of our financial markets. It needs to be not only solvent from a credit perspective, but it also must have sufficient liquid resources to satisfy the funding commitments of its clearing firms”.
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