Tail Risk: How to Incorporate Extreme Events into Financial Risk Modeling

Hear from Prof. Clifford Rossi as we examine some of today’s biggest financial risk modeling challenges.

Risk modelers have recently been befuddled by rare and powerful non-financial events, including the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, radical weather happenings, and a supply-chain crisis. What are the characteristics and impacts of these unpredictable incidents? In this podcast, University of Maryland professor and GARP CRO Outlook columnist Clifford Rossi will address these issues, and also share his views on how financial institutions can better understand these risks and link them properly to financial losses.

Speaker’s Bio

Clifford Rossi (PhD) is an Executive-in-Residence and Professor of the Practice at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. He is also the author of GARP’s monthly “CRO Outlook” column.

Prior to entering academia, Rossi had nearly 25 years of experience in banking and government, having held senior executive roles in risk management at several of the largest financial services companies. His most recent position was Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer for Citigroup’s Consumer Lending Group where he was responsible for overseeing the risk of a $300+B global portfolio of mortgage, home equity, student loans and auto loans with 700 employees under his direction. While there he was intimately involved in Citi’s TARP and stress test activities. He also served as Chief Credit Officer at Washington Mutual (WaMu) and as Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer at Countrywide Bank.

Previous to these assignments, Rossi held senior risk management positions at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. He started his career during the thrift crisis at the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Domestic Finance and later at the Office of Thrift Supervision working on key policy issues affecting depositories. Rossi was also an adjunct professor in the Finance Department at the Robert H. Smith School of Business for eight years and has numerous academic and nonacademic articles on banking industry topics. Rossi is frequently quoted on financial policy issues in major newspapers and has appeared on such programs as C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and CNN’s Situation Room. He is currently writing a book, Fundamentals of Risk Management for John Wiley & Sons, Inc. His policy and research interests include GSE reform, housing finance reform , bank capital issues and implications of Dodd-Frank on banking.