RMA/Wharton Advanced Risk Management Program

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Dates Location Tuition
Feb 22, 2009 - Mar 4, 2009 Philadelphia $33,750
May 17, 2009 - May 27, 2009 Philadelphia

This program consists of two non-consecutive 10-day sessions. Both 10-day sessions are required for completion.

If you have any immediate questions about the program, please contact Tamela Vieira at vieirat@wharton.upenn.edu.

Designed for the high-potential executive, the industry’s first-ever advanced executive program on risk management will concentrate on risk management as a strategic competitive strength. It explores the analytical framework for measuring, managing, and monitoring risk. Participants will broaden their perspectives and sharpen approaches using models, tools, and strategies to understand exposure to risk, including the implications of cross-boarder exposure. In addition, participants will view their organizations using an enterprise perspective, focusing on culture, governance, and stakeholder relationships.

For more information on the Risk Management Association, please contact Mark Zmiewski, Director, Strategic Learning and Research, at +1 215.446.4085.

Tuition for Philadelphia programs includes lodging and meals. Prices are subject to change. Course Consultants are available to provide more information on course specifics and discuss how this program might meet your needs. Please contact them at +1.215.898.1776 or by e-mail.


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This program will focus primarily on the following areas:

I. Risk management as a strategic competitive strength — helping participants capitalize on risk management capabilities by using them to help develop value-enhancing business strategies, to include:

  • Distinctive features of regulated financial intermediaries
  • Macroeconomic drivers of credit and market risk
  • The connection between corporate finance and risk management
  • Traditional and contemporary concerns about systemic risk

II. The analytical framework for measuring, managing, and monitoring risk — participants will broaden perspectives and sharpen approaches using models, tools, and strategies to understand:

  • Methods and issues in measuring exposure
  • Modeling challenges and practices
  • Stress testing, scenario analysis, and simulations
  • Unique risk characteristics presented by derivatives, securitizations, and real estate
  • Implication of cross border exposures
  • Economic capital

III. The enterprise perspective: culture, governance, and relationships with regulators — participants will gain a perspective on risk management in terms of internal governance, as well as its relationship to cultural and stakeholder concerns, to include:

  • Business ethics
  • Defining risk appetites
  • Role and influence of ratings agencies
  • Communicating risk profile internally and externally
  • Tension between economic capital and regulatory capital — challenges of implementing Basel II

Participation in the RMA/Wharton Advanced Risk Management Program affords an opportunity to build a network with a variety of individuals in risk-related fields and business lines. Participants should have eight or more years of experience in financial services, and will include those who think and make decisions about risk in the context of the entire enterprise, such as:

  • Leaders viewing risk management from multiple perspectives
  • Executives with risk expertise in one or more types of risk
  • Business line leaders requiring a heightened understanding of risk
  • Senior financial officers
  • Experts on a leadership track
  • Risk managers with expertise in one type of risk (eg. credit) or those who have a wide but not especially deep experience with several types of risk
  • Business line executives on track for broader assignments
  • Those with high potential who have secured their institution’s sponsorship

The program is highly interactive and addresses real-world challenges. The goal is for participants to bring back to sponsoring organizations tangible actions and results, with reinforcement following the program. To accomplish this goal, Wharton will use a bridge assignment and its virtual classroom to leverage learning from the first module to link it to the second, ensuring that before, between, and after the two residential sessions, participants will be engaged in ongoing learning, application, and analysis.

undefined FRANCIS X. DIEBOLD, PhD
W.P. Carey Professor of Economics, Finance, and Statistics
The Wharton School

Francis X. Diebold is W.P. Carey Professor of Economics, and Professor of Finance and statistics, at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Faculty Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA. Diebold works in econometrics, forecasting, finance, and macroeconomics. He has published extensively and has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals, including Econometrica and Review of Economics and Statistics. He is an elected Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Statistical Association and the recipient of Sloan, Guggenheim, and Humboldt awards. A prize-winning teacher and popular lecturer, Diebold has also held visiting appointments in Economics and Finance at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Cambridge University, Johns Hopkins University, and New York University. From 1986-1989 he served as an economist under Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington DC. He received his BS from the Wharton School in 1981 and his PhD in 1986, also from the University of Pennsylvania.
Neil Doherty , PhD  NEIL DOHERTY, PhD
Frederick H. Ecker Professor of Insurance and Risk Management
The Wharton School

Professor Doherty, a leading researcher on corporate risk management, has been an innovator in developing strategies for managing risks that traditionally have been insurable. These approaches — including using composites of insurance and debt financing and the use of option models in insurance and reinsurance — are now forming the basis for new products in the marketplace. Professor Doherty has written several books in this area, including Risk Management (1973, edited with R. L. Carter), Corporate Risk Management: A Financial Exposition (1985), The Financial Theory of Insurance Pricing (1987, with S. D'Arcy), and Integrated Risk Management (2000). He is also the coauthor of the textbook Managerial Economics (2002). He has consulted with organizations such as Amerco, Dow Chemical, Sears Roebuck, British Petroleum, Merck, GTE, CIGNA, and UPS and has won several teaching awards for his contributions to Wharton programs.
undefined RICHARD J. HERRING, PhD
Academic Director
Jacob Safra Professor of International Banking
The Wharton School

Richard Herring is a leading expert on international banking and finance. A consultant to banks around the world — including the US Federal Reserve Board and the International Monetary Fund — he specializes in issues of risk and stability in banking, including real estate bubbles, credit risk, bank failures, liquidity shocks, and banking regulation. He is a winner of Wharton's David Hauck Award for Outstanding Teaching and a three-time winner of the Undergraduate Division Excellence in Teaching Award.
undefined ROBERT STINE, PhD
Associate Professor of Statistics
The Wharton School

Dr. Robert Stine is Associate Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School. Some of his work has focused on the development of practical tools for building and assessing forecasts from models of time series data. His research ranges from derivations of the abstract, theoretical properties of these methods to their application in various marketing, financial, and clinical problems. His most recent work concerns the use of information theory to understand and contrast various methods for selecting an optimal statistical model, with particular relevance to the selection of important modeling factors. Additional current research projects with students and colleagues include graphical computer software development with applications in visualization, models for unobservable factors, and inference in the presence of outlying, unusual values. His research has appeared in numerous academic journals, including Journal of the American Statistical Association and Annals of Statistics.

He is a frequent consultant to industry, the pharmaceuticals industry in particular, for which he has analyzed marketing and clinical information with applications in strategic segmentation planning, drug efficacy, software design, and promotion assessment. Other consulting has spanned the legal implications of statistics, quality control, and business forecasting.
CHARLES TAYLOR
Director
Risk Management Association

Charles Taylor has been director, Operational Risk, at the Risk Management Association in Philadelphia since January 2003, where he oversees development of the operational risk management program.

Until 2002, Mr. Taylor was managing director, Strategy Development, at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation in New York, where he was a member of the senior management team. Before that, he was head of the global risk management practice at Andersen Consulting, where he led marketing, knowledge-sharing, and product development and worked with US and international clients. As executive director of the Group of Thirty in the first half of the 1990s, he authored several studies, spoke widely, and advised government and industry on issues of public policy and private practice.

Mr. Taylor started his career at the World Bank in 1973. He has degrees from Oxford and Cambridge in England in economics and mathematics and from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in business. He has published widely. He is married with three children and lives in Washington DC.
undefined NICHOLAS S. SOULELES, PhD
Associate Professor of Finance
The Wharton School

Dr. Nicholas S. Souleles, Associate Professor of Finance, received his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995. Since that time, he has been on the Wharton faculty. His research focuses on macroeconomics and consumer finances, namely households’ spending, saving/borrowing, and portfolio decisions. He was the lead profile in the recent (2006) BusinessWeek rankings of collegiate business programs.

He has been a frequent contributor to the finance and economic literature in journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, the Review of Financial Studies, and the American Economic Review.

He is a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and has been an academic consultant to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. He organizes the Finance Department’s Annual Rodney L. White Conference on Household Financial Decision-Making and Asset Holdings.
undefined TIL SCHUERMAN
Research Officer, Banking Studies
Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Til Schuermann is a research officer in the Banking Studies Function at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His research focuses on risk measurement and management in financial institutions and capital markets. He is also a Sloan Research Fellow at the Wharton Financial Institution Center and an associate editor for the Journal of Risk. Prior to joining the New York Fed, he was a director and head of research at the management consulting firm Oliver, Wyman & Company. From 1993 to 1996, he was at Bell Laboratories.

PNC makes a solid investment

Tom Whitford, executive vice president and chief administrative officer at PNC, recognizes a good investment when he sees one. With the cost of executive search fees reaching upwards of $300,000, effective retention tools represent a solid investment strategy. And Whitford believes one of his most powerful tools for retaining top performers is to send them to the RMA/Wharton Advanced Risk Management Program. In fact, he’s already sent three of his executives to the program and plans to send another three in 2008.

"This program gives me a tremendous development and retention tool," Whitford says. "By sending our executives through the program, we’re making a commitment to our employees about their personal and professional development." Whitford feels that the program delivers impressive ROI in terms of building depth and experience on his team.

“We have realized significant savings by staffing senior positions from within the company,” Whitford continues. The three executives who attended the program have all had their responsibilities expanded and are well positioned for more senior roles at PNC. "It is a world-class program that balances the quantitative with the qualitative, the theoretical with the practical."

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