Alfa-Bank's Philip Halperin: Building risk management in a transition economy

Philip Halperin, chief risk officer at Alfa-Bank, likens his move to Russia to Alice’s tumble down the rabbit hole into another world. A world where the concept of operational risk did not exist. But Russia is quickly catching up to the West and he’s enjoying being at the vanguard of change.

Philip Halperin has been chief risk officer at one of Russia largest institutions, Alfa-Bank, for more than a decade. As an American based in his nation’s former Cold War enemy, he has a unique insight into the challenges of advocating not only operational risk but also risk management as a whole in unfamiliar territory.

Halperin laughs when asked about the shock of moving to the former Soviet state. “Culture shock is what you have when you move from England to France,” he says. “This was not