The ERM Current™

The debate about the Federal Reserve’s plan to regulate pay practices at financial institutions is heating up.  Reports in the Wall Street Journal indicate that views on the matter are highly polarized.  In addition, experts are suggesting that the new regulations could mean that boards of directors will need to work harder to understand their company’s risk profile and compensation systems.  Here is an excerpt from the WSJ.

The Federal Reserve’s new push to regulate pay at U.S. banks will make things more difficult for boards and their compensation committees, already under fire for controversial pay practices. The planned Fed move could increase time demands, recruitment challenges and legal exposure for boards, predict directors and pay consultants. “You’re going to have to make sure the whole board is involved in risk issues,” says Robert E. Denham, a Los Angeles attorney and former chief executive of Salomon Inc. Mr. Denham is co-chairman of an executive-pay task force created by the Conference Board, a New York business group.

Companies and board members will need to rely more than ever on their enterprise risk management (“ERM”) programs to provide timely information to support compensation related decisions.  In addition, greater regulatory scrutiny will demand the implementation of strong ERM programs.  Wheelhouse Advisors can help your company design and implement a cost-effective ERM program.  Visit www.WheelhouseAdvisors.com to learn more.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the Federal Reserve is planning to begin regulating pay practices at financial institutions that it oversees currently.  The intent of the Federal Reserve is to limit short-term compensation that rewards excessive risk taking.  Here is what the Journal says about the plan.

Details of the Fed’s plan aren’t final, but the central bank will propose to review pay packages for tens of thousands of bankers to guard against the encouragement of excessive risk, and to allow banks to “claw back” compensation in certain cases. In essence, the Fed is moving to greatly broaden the kind of scrutiny that Obama administration pay czar Kenneth Feinberg has applied to seven firms receiving large amounts of federal aid.

The Fed’s move is the latest, and potentially most sweeping, of several efforts to curb risk-taking in the wake of the financial crisis. Congress approved provisions in both the bank-bailout bill last year and the economic-stimulus package in February to restrict some pay. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also addressed the issue in the administration’s proposed regulatory overhaul in June.

All of these efforts have had to confront a difficult truth: The relationship between risk-taking and compensation is neither simple nor well understood. Moreover, bankers and many others say it is important to encourage some risk-taking.

Since details of the plan have not yet been released, it is too soon to offer opinions on the effectiveness or impact of such oversight.  However, the Federal Reserve must be careful to avoid micromanaging pay and usurping the authority that is placed in the hands of the Board of Directors at these institutions.

During what is spring break for many students across the U.S. this week, some corporate students will be wondering what grade they will receive on their recent tests.  Of course, these students are the nation’s largest banking institutions and they are sweating the results of the “stress tests” that have been conducted over the past month.  While the Federal Reserve and Chairman Bernanke have been steadfast in their views that the tests are not “pass/fail” by nature, the results could prove to be highly impactful to the institutions.  Here is what the Wall Street Journal reported today.

Top federal bank regulators plan to meet early this week to discuss how to analyze the results of stress tests being conducted on the country’s 19 largest banks, people familiar with the matter said. Regulators announced the tests two months ago as part of an effort to determine how much assistance big banks might need to continue lending if the economic downturn worsens. The government is wrestling with how to bolster the lenders without appearing to prop up banks that are beyond repair.  Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Sunday that the Obama administration would consider removing top management and boards at financial companies if the government were to offer “exceptional” assistance to keep the firms operating.

The next few weeks could be very interesting as the test results shape actions by the regulators.  At the same time, first quarter earnings will be released which could prove to be a “double whammy” for some firms.  

This week the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs conducted a hearing on how systemic risk needs to be governed by our financial regulatory agencies.  All agreed for the need of a single regulator, but there was not unanimous agreement on who should serve in the role.  Most point to the Federal Reserve given their role as the lender of last resort.  However, a few fear the increased level of political influence on the Federal Reserve given that they are the central bank for the United States.   Here is the view of Robert Pozen, Chairman of MFS Investment Management and Senior Lecturer at Harvard University.

1. The United States needs one federal agency to play the role of systemic risk regulator because of the increasing frequency of global financial crises and higher correlations among different investment markets.

2. Congress should give this role to the Federal Reserve Board because it has the job of bailing out financial institutions whose failure would threaten the whole financial system.

3. The Federal Reserve Board should focus on five areas that are likely potential sources of systemic risk – inflated prices of real estate, institutions with high levels of leverage, new products falling into regulatory gaps, rapid growth in an asset class or intermediary and mismatches of assets and liabilities.

4. The Federal Reserve Board should monitor closely the activities of all types of financial institutions with very large or otherwise very risky assets since they are the ones most likely to impact the whole financial system.

5. If the Federal Reserve believes that actions need to be taken to reduce systemic risks, it should work closely with the regulatory agency with primary jurisdiction over the relevant institution, product or market.

Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the committee holding the hearing, said lawmakers have a large task in redesigning financial regulation, which is now broken. ”We cannot expect the creation of a systemic risk regulator to be a universal remedy for all that ails our financial services industry today,” Lieberman said. “As always, the devil is in the details.” 

In a speech last week to the Banque Centrale du Luxembourg, Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Donald Kohn provided a thorough analysis of events leading to the current financial crisis.  A major portion of his remarks focused on the inadequate investment in risk management by many financial institutions.  In his view, the long period of relative stability in financial markets bred a high level of complacency and inattention to the growing risks.  As he stated,

“Complacency contributed to the unwillingness of many financial market participants to enhance their risk-management systems sufficiently to take full account of the new (perhaps unknown) risks they were taking on.”

Risk management should be a primary focus of all companies, financial and non-financial, at all times.  It is precisely the moment when profits are at their peak and economic times are good that companies should be most vigilent.  Now, we are in catch-up mode and must make greater investment in risk management to ensure complacency does not become part of the risk equation again.

Last week, two past chairmen of the US Federal Reserve provided their perspectives on the current financial crisis gripping the world economies.  Alan Greenspan testified before the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that we are experiencing a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami”.  He went on to say that, “In 2005, I raised concerns that the protracted period of underpricing of risk, if history was any guide, would have dire consequences.”

However, in a 2005 speech, Mr. Greenspan lauded the sophistication of risk management related to derivatives that led to us to the current financial market collapse.  He noted the following, 

“The use of a growing array of derivatives and the related application of more-sophisticated approaches to measuring and managing risk are key factors underpinning the greater resilience of our largest financial institutions…”

Another former chairman, Paul Volcker, provided a simpler view at a roundtable session at Columbia University last week.  He stated, 

“We are dealing with unprecedented events, and unprecedented events call for unprecedented measures.  I think we really are going to have to rebuild the system pretty much from the ground up.”

Instead of a “tsunami”, maybe Mr. Greenspan should have used a different metaphor – a financial 9/11, perhaps?  Just as we are now rebuilding the World Trade Center, we will need to rebuild, according to Mr. Volcker, the financial system headquartered only a few blocks away on Wall Street.  Your thoughts?

Yesterday, the Federal Reserve released guidance to major financial institutions on how they should be managing compliance risk across the enterprise.  The guidance is very similar to enterprise risk management frameworks that have been in existence for some time now.  Here is an excerpt from their release describing the need for additional guidance.

While the guiding principles of sound risk management are the same for compliance as for other types of risk, the management and oversight of compliance risk presents certain challenges. For example, quantitative limits reflecting the board of directors’ risk appetite can be established for market and credit risks, allocated to the various business lines within the organization, and monitored by units independent of the business line. Compliance risk does not lend itself to similar processes for establishing and allocating overall risk tolerance, in part because organizations must comply with applicable rules and standards. Additionally, existing compliance risk metrics are often less meaningful in terms of aggregation and trend analysis as compared with more traditional market and credit risk metrics. These distinguishing characteristics of compliance risk underscore the need for a firmwide approach to compliance risk management and oversight for large, complex organizations. A firmwide compliance function that plays a key role in managing and overseeing compliance risk while promoting a strong culture of compliance across the organization is particularly important for large, complex organizations that have a number of separate business lines and legal entities that must comply with a wide range of applicable rules and standards.

The guidance is very well intended and comprehensive, but not well timed.  The subjects of this guidance should have been addressing these risks on an enterprise level well before the current collapse.  However, as the saying goes, “better late than never!”.  Your thoughts?  Click here to read the entire supervisory letter from the Federal Reserve.