RMA/Wharton Advanced Risk Management Program

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Wharton Executive Education
Dates Location Tuition
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This program consists of two non-consecutive sessions. Both sessions are required for completion.

If you have any immediate questions about the program content, please contact Mark Zmiewski, RMA Director of Enterprise Risk and Product Management at +1.215.446.4085.

As companies face uncertainty in the current market, the impetus is on senior executives to make risk a high priority. In fact, recent studies show that boards are asking senior executives to increase their involvement in risk oversight.* The Wharton Advanced Risk Management Program answers this “call to arms,” providing executives in banking and related fields with analytical frameworks, strategies, and resources for measuring, managing, and monitoring risk.

*”Liquidity, Crime Woes Shake Up Chief Risk Officers,” CFO.com, June 5, 2009

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. Program Consultants are available to provide more information on course specifics and discuss how this program might meet your needs. Please contact them by e-mail or by telephone at +1 215.898.1776. Plan your stay.


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Through interactive sessions, panel discussions, and workshops, participants will broaden their understanding of risk management and learn to apply their knowledge to real business situations. Curriculum focuses primarily on the following areas:

I. Risk management as a strategic competitive strength:

  • Macroeconomic drivers of risk
  • Distinctive features of regulated financial intermediaries and how the regulatory environment is evolving with the crisis
  • The connection between corporate finance and managerial decision making and risk management
  • Study of systemic risk and the unique challenges of being a financial intermediary in today’s interconnected world

II. The analytical framework for measuring, managing, and monitoring risk:

  • Methods and issues in measuring risk exposure
  • Modeling challenges and practices
  • Scenario-based strategic planning
  • Unique risk characteristics presented by derivatives and real estate assets
  • Economic capital

III. The enterprise perspective including culture, governance, and relationships with stakeholders:

  • Peripheral vision and critical decision making
  • Defining risk appetites
  • Communicating risk profile to both internal and external stakeholders
  • Tension between economic capital and regulatory capital
  • Enterprise risk management

Related Risk Management Articles

Knowledge@Wharton

Advanced Risk Management participants have several years of risk management experience in banking and related fields. This includes Chief Risk Officers, business-line and enterprise-wide risk managers, and other individuals in search of a deeper understanding of risk management.

The Advanced Risk Management Program attracts qualified candidates from around the world, including those from Australia, Canada, Ireland, Indonesia, India, England, Germany, Spain, Nigeria, Indonesia, South Africa, the Netherlands, and the United States.

Advanced Risk Management Program is highly interactive and addresses real-world challenges. Participants leave the program with:

  • A network of experienced risk professionals across a wide spectrum of institutions and geographic locations.
  • An opportunity to utilize tools around modeling analysis, critical thinking, scenario planning, and receive feedback from faculty and peers.
  • An opportunity to apply knowledge to current issues facing their individual organizations.

undefined RICHARD J. HERRING, PhD
Faculty 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 U.S. 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 BRIAN BUSHEE, PhD
Associate Professor of Accounting
The Wharton School

Brian J. Bushee is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining Wharton in 2000, he was an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Business School and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. He has also worked as a Senior Credit Analyst for CoreStates Financial Corp. and as a National Office Researcher for Coopers and Lybrand LLP. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan and AB from Duke University. His research focuses on the impact of information intermediaries—such as institutional investors, sell-side analysts, and the business press—on corporate disclosure decisions and on the stock market pricing of information. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Accounting Research, Accounting Review, and Review of Accounting Studies. Brian currently teaches an MBA elective called Problems in Financial Reporting and has taught the MBA introductory financial accounting course at Wharton, Harvard, and Chicago. He also teaches in the Wharton Seminar for Business Journalists.
Thomas Donaldson, PhD TOM DONALDSON, PhD
Mark O. Winkelman Professor
Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics
The Wharton School

Thomas Donaldson has consulted and lectured at many organizations, including the Business Roundtable, Goldman Sachs, Walt Disney, the United Nations, Microsoft, The Tata Group, Exelon, Motorola, AT&T, JP Morgan, Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, Los Alamos National Laboratory, ConocoPhillips, Shell, IBM, Western Mining-Australia, Pfizer, the AMA, the IMF, Bankers Trust, and the World Bank. He served from 2004-2009 as an appointed member of the National Adjudicatory Council of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA, formerly the NASD). He was named the most influential "thought leader" in Ethisphere Magazine's 2007 ranking of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics. In 2009 he won the Aspen Institute's Pioneer Award for lifetime achievement.

Tom Donaldson has written broadly in the area of business ethics, values, and leadership. His books include: Ethical Issues in Business, 8th Edition (Prentice-Hall Inc., 2007), with P. Werhane and Ethics in International Business (Oxford University Press, 1989).
Gene Guill GENE GUILL, PhD
Managing Director
Deutsche Bank

Dr. Guill is a managing director in the Loan Exposure Management Group of Deutsche Bank. Based in New York, Dr. Guill is responsible for the valuation and risk management models and practices deployed in managing Deutsche Bank's international large corporate and European mid-cap loan portfolios.

Dr. Guill is a member of the board of directors of BELL: Building Educated Leaders for Life (2007 to present), a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Finance (2007 to present), and a charter member of Risk Who's Who. He has served as chairman (2002-05), vice-chairman (2001-02), and member of the board of directors (2001-06) of the International Association of Credit Portfolio Managers.
henisz-witold WITOLD J. HENISZ
Associate Professor of Management
The Wharton School

Dr. Witold J. Henisz is an Associate Professor of Management at the Wharton School. His research examines the impact of political hazards on international investment strategy. He analyzes the political and economic determinants of government attempts to redistribute investor returns to the broader polity, the strategic responses by organizations to such pressure, and the determinants of the success of individual organizations in withstanding such pressure.

Professor Henisz has served as a consultant for the World Bank, The Inter-American Development Bank, The Conference Board, and Eurasia Group. He previously worked for The International Monetary Fund. He is currently a principal in the political risk management consultancy PRIMA LLC.
William Lang WILLIAM LANG
Vice President
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

William Lang is a Vice President in the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Supervision, Regulation and Credit department. He oversees the department’s Retail Risk Analysis responsible for advancing the Federal Reserve System’s efforts to supervise advanced consumer credit risk management practices of banking organizations. He has published numerous articles in leading academic journals including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of Financial Intermediation, and the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking.
undefined KATHY PEARSON, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor,
Operations and Information Management Department
The Wharton School

Kathy Pearson, PhD, serves as an adjunct associate professor in the Operations and Information Management Department at the Wharton School. She has taught operations management courses in the MBA program and Executive Master’s of Technology Management program as well as probability and statistics, simulation modeling, and other courses for the department and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, Dr. Pearson is a senior consultant and director, Executive Education, for Decision Strategies International (DSI), a management consulting firm focused on scenario-based strategic planning and decision making. She specializes in subject areas such as critical thinking, scenario planning, strategic decision making, project management, and stakeholder analysis. Dr. Pearson has also worked with executives from a wide variety of industries and has taught at CEDEP at INSEAD in Fountainebleau, France.
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.
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 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 ROBERT STINE, PhD
Professor of Statistics
The Wharton School

Dr. Robert Stine is Associate Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School and a frequent consultant to industry. 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. His research has appeared in numerous academic journals, including Journal of the American Statistical Association and Annals of Statistics. 
Tom Whitford TOM WHITFORD
Chief Risk Officer
PNC

In the newly created position of chief risk officer, Tom Whitford calls into service his 20-plus years of experience in various PNC functions. Since joining PNC in 1983 from management consultants Booz, Allen and Hamilton, he has held several leadership positions in Consumer Banking, Personal Trust, Mutual Funds, Asset Management, and most recently as chief executive officer of PNC Advisors before being named chief risk officer in 2002. In that position, he oversees activity related to credit risk, market risk, fiduciary risk, operational risk, risk analytics and audit. Whitford is charged with ensuring that PNC fully leverages all of its resources to enhance customer and shareholder value.
Mike Useem, PhD MIKE USEEM, PhD
The William and Jacalyn Egan Professor
Professor of Management
The Wharton School

Mike Useem offers courses on management, leadership, and corporate governance to MBA and senior executive audiences in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He has worked extensively on leadership development and governance with many organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. He is the author of The Leader's Checklist: 15 Mission-Critical Principles; The Go Point: When It's Time to Decide; Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win; The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All; Investor Capitalism: How Money Managers Are Changing the Face of Corporate America; and Executive Defense: Shareholder Power and Corporate Reorganization. From the slopes of Mount Everest to the battlefields of Gettysburg, Dr. Useem has gone to great lengths to present leadership lessons to executives.

Mike works with the World Economic Forum on several initiatives to identify ways of preventing, mitigating, and responding to significant enterprise risks. He serves with the WEF Global Council on Catastrophic Risks.

"I found the programme very challenging of accepted thinking and a good opportunity learn about a broad range of risk disciplines as well as developing a network of fellow risk professionals from across the world."

— Group Compliance and Regulatory Risk Director, Lloyds TSB (2010 Participant)


"The program developed by Wharton and RMA offers its participants the best and most advanced thinking about risk management in today's volatile and fast-paced financial environment.  The program provides both quantitative and non-quantitative risk managers with a foundational refresher in risk management fundamentals that they then put to use in highly interactive sessions with Wharton faculty and outside Risk Management professionals who bring a wealth of knowledge to the seminars.  The learnings from this program were immediately applicable back at the office.  I highly recommend this program to any risk manager who is looking to take their skill and knowledge up to state of the art thinking on this topic."
— Head of Portfolio Reporting and Analytics, Morgan Stanley (2010 Participant)

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 six of his executives to the program.

"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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