|
Operational Risk
magazine
and later at risk.net. Equally, thanks to Tom Osborn, my supportive article editor, and
to all the many people at InfoPro Digital with whom I work regularly.
For more than a decade I have worked closely with a wide range of businesses.
They include banks, insurance companies, settlement agencies, trading houses, inter-
national financial institutions, universities, training companies, regulatory bodies and
even hospitals and governmental agencies. I am very grateful for the trust they have
placed in me and would gladly recognize them here but for the need for confidentiality.
Thank you for sharing your practices, ideas and visions, and for embracing operational
risk management. This book would not have been possible without you.
Besides, I have always kept my lifelong attachment to academia. After almost
20 years with the University of Brussels, University College London (UCL) in 2013
offered me the post of Honorary Reader for the course “Operational Risk Measurement
Preface
xvii
for the Financial Services” in the department of Computer Science. The course is
now in its sixth year and I’m delighted to see some of my former students follow-
ing successful careers in operational risk. I’m indebted to Donald Lawrence, who
introduced me to UCL, to Tomaso Aste, for appointing me as part of the university’s
prestigious faculty, and to Gareth Peters, for his brilliant collaboration in research
and teaching. I thank UCL for its kind support and am honored to be part of the
UCL community.
A separate category of appreciation goes to Amédée Prouvost, Director of
Operational Risk at the World Bank, for agreeing to write the foreword and for doing
it in such laudatory terms. Amédée’s vision of operational risk and of learning made
us immediate friends and work partners. Together with his ORM team at the World
Bank – Riaz Ahmed, Kyalo Kibua, Jeronimo Perrotta, Jacinta Da’Silva – we piloted,
in June 2018, the first PRMIA Certificate of Learning and Practice of Advanced ORM,
certifying 33 risk champions at the end of the course. Many thanks to the World Bank
team and all the course participants for this successful pilot.
For this project, as for many, PRMIA has been a fantastic business partner, inno-
vative and responsive. My special gratitude goes to Mary Rehm and Ashley Squier for
their skill and dedication in sourcing and organizing courses, webinars and certifica-
tions all over the world. A big thank you to PRMIA for its continuous support and for
endorsing this book.
The second unexpected event at the origin of this book is recent. Scott Porter,
director of Global Market Insights (GMI), had frequently asked me to write a book
about operational risk. I had always declined because of other commitments – but Scott
was persistent and I eventually agreed, despite what it meant in studious evenings and
weekends, hours of redaction on planes and trains, and days of concentration in the
silence of the library of the Institute of Directors. I thank him for that – without his
insistence, this book would probably not have seen the light. However, the real catalyst
was that GMI ceased all operations after I had delivered the manuscript. The rights
returned to me and I was left with a 50,000-word manuscript and no immediate route
for publication. This unexpected event let me experience first hand the benefits of crisis
management and necessary resilience. After a short period of intense contacts, happily,
Wiley & Sons stepped in, picking up the project, and together we decided to even
enlarge the scope, adding a fifth part. The result is undoubtedly better than it would
have been without Wiley’s intervention.
I’m immensely grateful to Gemma Valler, the commissioning editor, for believing
in the book, to Elisha Benjamin, the project editor, for the formatting and seeking all
permissions so quickly, and to Caroline Vincent, for overseeing the production and
keeping deadlines tight. I’m equally grateful to Gladys Ganaden for her help with the
graphics, as well as the entire production and sales team at Wiley.
Importantly, this book would not have been the same without the fantastic editing
work of my English editor, Sean Martin. He conscientiously reviewed every chapter,
every line and every word of the manuscript, cover to cover, before submission
xviii
PREFACE
to publishers. He corrected the French in my English, simplified sentences and even
fact-checked me at times. I thank him for his tremendous work.
My final and heartfelt thanks go to my family: my father, for teaching me prudence
and the capacity to see and avoid danger; my mother and my sister, for showing me
optimism and boldness, its virtues and its perils; my daughter Victoria, for the incred-
ible adult she became, both daring and astute, embracing a life of altruism and testing
right now the limits of our risk appetite with her international projects; my husband
Robert Lang, for his unwavering love and support, for our deep conversations on risk
and management, allowing me to witness how CEOs think and act, and for bringing
excellent risk management practice in the companies he runs so successfully.
No acknowledgment would be complete without thanking our youngest children,
Tristan and Talitha, for being so wonderful and patient, so clever and joyful. And of
course thanks to the kind people who help to look after them while we travel worldwide
for our work. I hope that the passion, hard work and dedication that our children witness
will help them thrive in whatever they choose to do later in life. Finally, I have a promise
to keep: my next book will be for children . . .
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
