Asia Risk 15: Risk management practices transformed following crises

Local banks in Asia have made huge advances in the way they manage financial risks during the past 15 years. Many of the initial best practices came in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis and more latterly with the implementation of Basel II. But there is still much work to be done. Harry Thompson reports

Many market-watchers point to the Asian Financial Crisis, which hit the region in July 1997, as the initiator for systematised risk management practices in Asia. Before then, “quantitative risk management was pretty much in its infancy anywhere in the world”, says Tham Ming Soong, head of risk management at UOB Group in Singapore. “We had the likes of JP Morgan coming up with the 4.15 report and its parametric approach to measuring risk – the initial stages of using the value-at-risk (VAR)