Bankers arrive in NYC for Alternative Risk Strategies event

Bankers have started arriving in New York ahead of Risk magazine’s inaugural alternative risk conference in North America, Alternative Risk Strategies 2001 USA, which aims to provide a comprehensive analysis on the convergence of capital and insurance markets in the risk transfer business.

The conference, taking place on Thursday and Friday this week, will commence with a keynote presentation by leading economist Peter Bernstein, author of the book ‘Against the Gods’. Bernstein’s address will focus around his latest as-yet unpublished paper ‘Risk Without Boundaries’ that explores how well risk managers understand the concept of uncertainty. “We don’t understand that unpredictability and surprise are the normal rather than the anomaly. Mathematics and models are only tools, not the objective of risk management. They cannot reach all the way to ‘risk without boundaries’,” Bernstein told RiskNews. He will be joined with Thursday morning presentations from Tom Skwarek, a principal at Swiss Re New Markets, and Tobey Russ, president of Chubb Financial Solutions. Both Skwarek and Russ come from the insurance/reinsurance side of risk management, and have been moving into traditional capital markets areas of financial services through their convergence finance businesses.

Following these addresses, delegates will receive an update on the changes to accounting, tax and regulatory rules related to risk management and capital allocation from leading professionals. The convention will then break into two streams: stream one will explore the latest advances in convergence banking and discuss the best means for developing and pricing alternative risk financing. Stream two will discuss ART (alternative risk transfer) tools and techniques, focussing on the securitisation of both catastrophe and non-catastrophe risk insurance, including pricing and modelling, and the use of weather derivatives.

For full conference details, please visit www.risk-conferences.com.