CBA’s Alden Toevs on enterprise risk management

A major failure of risk management highlighted by the global financial crisis was the inability of financial institutions to view risk on a holistic basis. Wietske Blees speaks with Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s chief risk officer, Alden Toevs, about the group’s approach to enterprise risk management, including a China stress test, and its deliberate pro-cyclical asset/liability mismatch

Alden Toevs, Commonwealth Bank of Australia

The global financial crisis exposed, with chilling clarity, the dangers of thinking in silos, particularly where risk management is concerned. Across the globe, a focus on individual risk exposures – without taking into consideration the broader picture – led to the build-up of complex, interrelated exposures that ultimately brought the financial system to the brink of collapse. In other words, it was a failure to consider risks on an enterprise-wide basis that was at the root of many of the