Risk Australia : Prudent Australia in bid to steer global risk policy

Australia appears to have escaped the worst of the global financial crisis but senior bankers, leading academics and a representative from the Australian Treasury speaking at Risk Australia 2009 in Sydney today stressed there is no room for complacency and more focus must be placed on risk management, both home and abroad.

Speakers said senior officials around the world were well aware of potential risks in the financial system before the crisis started. They said financial models that attempted to quantify risks were not the reason for the crisis, rather senior policymakers and finance executives had deliberately chosen to ignore the potential risks that could cause severe distress in the financial system.

Delivering the keynote address, Jim Murphy, an executive director in the markets group at the Australian