Risk Assessment and Monitoring Protocol Consulting Service

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Natalie Farmer
3 years ago
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Who does RAMP serve to serve the risk management needs of?
What is the name of the website that provides the information about the RAMP?
What does RAMP provide a consolidated enterprise wide view of?

1 August 2015 Risk Assessment and Monitoring Protocol Consulting Service Our Risk Assessment and Monitoring Protocol Service, ( RAMP ) is designed to fulfill the risk management needs of asset owners. RAMP provides a consolidated enterprise wide view of risk, and yet requires almost no active effort on the part of the asset owner s internal staff. There are four basic components of the RAMP service package: 1. The first is a consulting assignment where our staff evaluates the existing investment policy documents of the asset owner and makes recommendations as needed so that the risk management practices of the asset owner will conform to essential best practices. These recommendations would be suggestions on risk metrics and budgeting for asset classes and external managers. 2. The second key component is daily monitoring of portfolio positions to ensure that all forward looking risk assessments are in compliance with the updated investment policies. Northfield receives all the position data and benchmark data from custodians and any benchmark index data providers through a highly secure process. Extensive risk reports are produced on a daily basis, and are made available to clients via a secure web portal. Any violations of risk policies are immediately reported by a notification More extensive monthly reports that asset owners can use as input to strategic decisions such as asset allocation and the hiring/firing of managers. These monthly reports will include several risk measurement techniques that are proprietary to Northfield, including our own approach to evaluating active manager risk, liquidity risk and the potential for sponsor funding default. 4. A highly illustrated annual report suitable for presentation at board meetings and to articulate the risk management process to any executive or external constituents. Northfield analysts will also be available to attend board meetings to explain any of the RAMP materials. As you can see, what the RAMP process does not require is an extensive effort by the internal staff at an asset owner. We believe our RAMP service compliments the asset owners staffing requirements by allowing you to outsource all or part of your risk management needs. The RAMP reporting process is built upon a few key principles with which our clients should be familiar. In preparation for expert witness testimony in litigation over a defined benefit plan, we studied the risk management 1

2 practices of many asset owners and found them widely inadequate. In our March 2012 newsletter, we articulated ten fundamentals to effective risk management by asset owners, Industry response to these concepts was very positive, including a request from the US Society of Actuaries to include this material into their training curriculum. Among the ten principles, two stand out as the most important. The first is that risk is about the future not the past. Every aspect of the asset owner s portfolio must be examined in an explicitly forward-looking modeling framework over multiple time horizons. Simply relying on historic measures of fund volatility or tracking error is just not good enough. The second is that 100% of the assets of a fund must be reviewed regularly in granular detail. In today s world of complex derivatives, and a high reliance on alternative asset classes such as real estate and private equity, dealing with risk only at the asset allocation level is grossly inadequate. If you own an asset, you should know what it is and know enough about it to understand each position s incremental impact on total fund risk. If you don t know that much information, don t own the asset. To that end, the RAMP service package includes Northfield taking the responsibility to ensure that all client assets are included in the analysis. For some illiquid asset classes such as real estate, we offer multiple levels of analytical depth depending on the complexity of the portfolio and the client s budget. By including alternative assets in every aspect of the overall analysis, RAMP facilitates asset owners taking action to intelligently manage their risk exposure through time, as described in our recent white paper on factor model structures that transcend traditional asset class definitions, Our factor representation of what risks an asset owner may wish to hedge facilitates the creation of mandates for a designated financial provider. The RAMP service is built around Northfield s Everything, Everywhere (EE) model. The EE model routinely covers millions of securities at the individual identifier level. Basic coverage is about 500,000 securities globally including stocks, vanilla fixed income, currencies, and commodities. For the RAMP service, this coverage is extended to include US Mortgage securities (2 million plus), US Municipal Bonds (1.2 million issues), global mutual fund/hedge funds/etfs (over 100K), structured fixed income securities (500K) and alternative assets. In addition, coverage of more exotic securities such as OTC derivative contracts or privately placed bonds is provided through our EENIAC companion service. An important advantage of the design of the EE model is that it provides very tight linkages between asset classes. For example, it uses the Merton (1974) contingent claims concept to transform the credit risk in bond portfolios into risk equivalent equity portfolios. Our research on how to use this approach for the credit risk of sovereign debt won the 2013 PRMIA award for New Frontiers in Risk Management. Another key aspect of the EE model for asset owners is that risk assessment metrics can be analyzed over various time horizons between two weeks and one year. For very long term risk assessments (e.g. asset-liability and funding volatility), a bootstrap simulation module has been created, as was described in our June 2013 newsletter, The following pages offer three sample reports from the RAMP Service. We believe that RAMP will fulfill an important need to the asset owner community and invite interested parties to request further information. Please contact Northfield Sales to learn more. In the US, , sales@northinfo.com. EMEA Region, +44 (0) , sales-europe@northinfo.com. Asia Pacific Region, +81 (0) , sales-asia@northinfo.com. 2

3 RAMP: Client Name Plan Summary Report 3

4 RAMP: Total Plan Monthly Report Page 1 4

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(Part.1) FOUNDATIONS OF RISK MANAGEMENT

(Part.1) FOUNDATIONS OF RISK MANAGEMENT 1 : Risk Taking: A Corporate Governance Perspective Delineating Efficient Portfolios 2: The Standard Capital Asset Pricing Model 1 : Risk : A Helicopter View 2:

Risk Assessment and Monitoring Protocol Consulting Service

Who does RAMP serve to serve the risk management needs of?

What is the name of the website that provides the information about the RAMP?

What does RAMP provide a consolidated enterprise wide view of?