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Getting Started with Solstice

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 15:47:20 +0000

In this segment we list a few suggestions of how to get started with Solstice. The platform offers rich functionality so the optimal way to use it will vary for different users.

For non-technical users the best way to access Solstice functionality is probably via the Graphical User Interface.

Getting Started

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

In this segment of the Equinox User Documentation we list a few suggestions of how to get started using Equinox. The platform offers rich functionality that can be combined in various ways. What is relevant and optimal will vary for different users and their use context.

Using Equinox for Corporate Scope 2 Reporting

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

The Corporate Scope 2 Methodology Workflow is an attribution and reporting methodology for certain types of indirect GHG emissions of organizations (typically companies), primarily emissions linked to the purchase of electricity from grids. The workflow shows how to implement the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance (2015) (See References).

Equinox Green Public Procurement Workflow

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

Europe’s public authorities are major consumers of goods and services via the public procurement process. By using their purchasing power to choose environmentally friendly goods, services and works, they can make an important contribution to sustainable consumption and production - what is called Green Public Procurement (GPP) or green purchasing. GPP is a voluntary instrument, not a legal standard, but has a key role to play in the EU’s efforts to become a more resource-efficient economy. To be effective, GPP requires the inclusion of clear and verifiable environmental criteria for products and services in the public procurement process. In Equinox we aim to support GPP by integrating the de-facto standard data models and ontologies of the TED platform into sustainable portfolio workflows.

Solstice Visualizations

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The visualization explorer app aims to provide an overview of the available visualization functionality in a consistent interface.

Its models may be used also by other Solstice GUI apps to create visualizations

Solstice Workflows

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Solstice Workflow Explorer App enables executing Solstice Workflows via a Web-based GUI

Workflows

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Results Explorer allows the review (and potential post-processing) of stored calculation results.

Equinox CAPMF Workflows

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The CAPMF Workflow concerns the ingestion, organization and use of OECD Climate Action and Policy Data (See References).

Equinox CIRIS Workflows

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

The CIRIS/GPC Methodology Workflow is an attribution and reporting methodology for the GHG emissions of Municipalities / Cities. It implements the GPC Recommendations for Community-Scale emissions accounting (See References).

Equinox PCAF Mortgage Workflow

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

The Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials proposed methodologies (The Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard for the Financial Industry, PCAF, 2020) for attributing GHG Emissions to diverse financial contracts. One of the currently developed asset classes concerns Mortgage portfolios. The methodology as implemented in Equinox is documented below.

Equinox Equator Principles Workflows

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

A group of workflows implemented in Equinox revolve around the Equator Principles . The Equator Principles is a (voluntary) risk management framework, developed and adopted by financial institutions for determining, assessing and managing environmental and social risk in projects (Project Finance ). It is primarily intended to provide a minimum standard for due diligence and monitoring to support responsible risk decision-making.

PCAF Project Finance

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

The Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials proposed methodologies (PCAF (2020), The Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard for the Financial Industry.) for attributing GHG Emissions to diverse financial contracts.

The workflows for PCAF methodologies implemented in Equinox are documented below. For the methodologies themselves consult the corresponding PCAF documentation or the Open Risk Manual Entries

Concepts

Sat, 17 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Equinox uses a number of flexible abstractions (data models) that different workflows may compose and use in slightly different ways. This design allows flexibility towards implementing a growing range of sustainable finance and portfolio management applications.

Solstice Workflows

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 15:47:20 +0000

QUOTE: Solstice is still in active development. The functionality of the platform will be significantly enhanced in future versions. If you have specific requests / ideas please raise them in our GitHub repository.

Equinox GHG Protocol Project Workflow

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

The GHG Project Workflow is structured around the recommendations of the GHG Protocol for Projects. The Project concept and data model holds data for any (generic) sustainability Project (irrespective of physical attributes, financial attributes or contractual nature). A GHG project is any well-defined set of actions that intentionally leads to a modification of the GHG emissions profile of a physical asset or collection of assets.

Data Types

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Equinox platform uses at its backend a powerful database that supports storing a variety of data formats. This versatility is essential if one is to work with diverse data sources to obtain a holistic view of “ground truth”. Here we discuss three important sub-categories that are used throughout the platform.

Pages, Workflows and Playbooks

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Users access and make use of Equinox through a number of “pages” that work similar to most web applications.

Emission Factor Selection

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 15:47:20 +0000

The integration of the IPCC EFDB Database into Equinox is described in the Reference Data Section of the Equinox User Manual (See Reference Data). Here we illustrate a basic workflow that helps search for and retrieve relevant emission factor (EF) data.

Equinox EBA Scorecard Workflows

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

Project Finance Credit Risk Analysis may involve arbitrarily complicated tools and risk models, depending on the nature, size and complexity of the project being financed. As a common denominator, regulatory frameworks starting with Basel II Specialized Lending articulate a simplified (standardized scorecard). This Workflow discusses how Equinox provides a simplified workflow to implement a standardized scorecard workflow.

Equinox Policy App

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

Portfolio Policies are an important component of modern portfolio management. Having an overview of applicable policies, how they evolved over time and what impact they have is not trivial. The Equinox Policy app aims to help with associated tasks.

Equinox Portfolio App

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

The Portfolio App is the central app that provides the scaffolding for most other functionality provided by Equinox. At its core it is a uniform interface to the portfolio data.

Equinox Risk Data

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

The Equinox Risk app is the primary means to apply risk analytics and models to the portfolio.

Adopted Standards and Further References

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

Sustainable Finance Standards

The sustainability related standards currently adopted / implemented in Equinox are based principally on the following references:

GHG Protocol Standards

The GHG Protocol for Projects (The GHG Protocol for Project Accounting, 2005)
GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance (An amendment to the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, 2015)
Fong, W. K., M. Sotos, M. Doust, S. Schultz, A. Marques, and C. Deng-Beck (2014). Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories: An Accounting and Reporting Standard for Cities. World Resources Institute. C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group; Local Governments for Sustainability ICLEI. 1, 1–176.

PCAF Standards

PCAF Emissions Accounting and Reporting for Residential Mortgages
PCAF Emissions Accounting and Reporting for Project Finance

Other Sustainable Finance

Equator Principles for Project Finance
OECD Climate Actions and Policies Database

Regulatory Standards and Other Resources

BIS/EBA Standardized Credit Risk assessment of Project Finance
The EFDB Database
The TED Database

Open Risk White Papers

The following Open Risk White Papers provide conceptual context or other implementation details underpinning the Equinox platform.

The Sustainability Challenge

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

The Sustainability Challenge

Sustainability, understood broadly in its environmental, economic and social dimensions, is emerging as the undisputed constraint that shapes future human economic activities.It specifically shapes how the financial system facilitates, shapes and empowers economic life leading to the concept of Sustainable Finance.

Developing tools and methodologies that improve the ability of all stakeholders to assess and report risks in sustainable finance context is an important and timely objective.

Browser

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

All Academy courses can be accessed using a tablet, laptop or desktop browser. Here we list those courses that must use a browser to enable the full functionality of the various resources and assignments of the course.

Access these Courses at the Open Risk Academy

Mobile-App

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A subset of Academy courses can be experienced fully via the mobile app.

Access these Courses at the Open Risk Academy

Advanced Level

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Advanced level Academy courses explore specialized topics that may not be of general interest, typically in depth. They might have significant prerequisite knowledge in one or more related domains at the core level.

The implication is that terms, concepts etc. are used without introduction or explanation (they are assumed known).

NB: Advanced level courses do not necessarily require technical knowledge such as mathematics or programming, but they may require thorough knowledge and exposure to a domain.

Core Level

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As the name indicates, Core level Academy courses cover topics that are of general interest in a given domain.

They have some prerequisite knowledge. Important terms, concepts etc. are introduced but there is an assumption of basic background knowledge. The student is not exposed to the concepts for the very first time.

Introductory Level

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introductory level Academy courses introduce a domain without any assumptions of prior domain knowledge.

Depending on domain, prerequisite knowledge will be what is assumed available from formal educational tracts. Most domain terms, concepts etc. are introduced.

Access these Courses at the Open Risk Academy

Thousands of possible social media platforms - but is anyone actually good?

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past two decades with the rapid diffusion of digital technologies billions of people changed behaviors. Almost everybody now is spending considerable time online, interacting with other people in newly invented social media. Diverse software platforms enable exchanges of all sorts of information over internet network infrastructures. Given the massive adoption there is little doubt that people derive meaningful utility from social media. At the same time a range of seriously negative impacts is becoming increasingly clear.

Portfolio Waterfall Reports

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Portfolio Waterfall Reports connect and explain two different period snapshots.

Analysing the volatility of financed emissions

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this post we analyse the variability profile of reported financed emissions of financial institutions such as banks. The discussion will concern primarily loan portfolios but similar considerations apply to other capital instruments. Our context are the so-called Scope 3 - Category 15 emissions under the terminology of the GHG Protocol, namely the emissions of the companies being financed by the loan portfolio.

Mathematical Formulation of Financial Statements

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:05:12 +0100

The standard description of financial reporting almost entirely avoids mathematical formulation (variables, equations and using abstraction as a means to step back from less relevant details). While historically there have been efforts to describe the underlying accounting systems in more rigorous language (see ¹, ²), the same does not apply to the higher level of published financial statements. The primary exception is, of-course, the famous balance sheet equation, which, while fundamental, does not remotely cover the richness of of the financial reporting machinery. Our objective in this post is to express the typical financial statements more concisely: using symbolic mathematical notation that substantially captures their numerical information content and the constraints being satisfied.

DEB Graphs

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Double-Entry-Bookkeeping graphs express mathematically in terms of graph theoretical constructs the balance constraints of double-entry bookkeeping.

19, Connecting the Dots, Accounting Graphs for Double and Quadruple-Entry Bookkeeping

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 19: Connecting the Dots: Accounting Graphs for Double and Quadruple-Entry Bookkeeping

We develop the concept of an accounting graph as an intuitive and flexible tool that can faithfully represent widely used accounting concepts. More specifically, a weighted directed multigraph representation is applied to model standard double-entry bookkeeping (DEB) of individual accounting entities but extended to also provide a consistent accounting graph for larger economic networks that feature multiple transacting entities (so-called quadruple-entry accounting). We illustrate the concepts with stylized accounting examples. Such accounting graphs are promising both as educational tools and towards the application of computational tools on accounting data.

Graphs for Double and Quadruple-entry Accounting

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

"The Principles of Book-keeping by Double Entry constitute a theory which is mathematically by no means uninteresting: it is in fact like Euclid's theory of ratios an absolutely perfect one, and it is only its extreme simplicity which prevents it from being as interesting as it would otherwise be. - Arthur Cayley"

Working with Large Matrices using Command Line Tools

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Working with Large Matrices using Command Line Tools

This course is an Open Risk Academy CrashCourse introduction to using Linux command line tools to work (in particular) with large text files encoding numerical data in matrix format. A central role is played by awk, the venerable UNIX pattern-matching language and tool.

Green Public Procurement

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Green Public Procurement is the practice of leveraging public procurement towards achieving sustainability goals.

This Collection of Academy courses aims covers diverse quantitative and modeling aspects of Green Public Procurement.

Access these Courses at the Open Risk Academy

18, Sustainable Public Procurement, Part II, Making Use Of Environmentally Extended Input-Output Data

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 18: Sustainable Public Procurement. Part II: Making Use Of Environmentally Extended Input-Output Data

Adopting Open Data and Open Source tools can be a catalyst in the sustainability transition and Green Public Procurement (GPP) is a particularly opportune domain to explore this potential. In the first paper in this series we outlined key information flows and tasks that are relevant in this context. Here we dive deeper into how one can leverage a particularly promising source of economic and environmental impact information: Environmentally Extended Input-Output (EEIO) databases. We will discuss some of the challenges that must be addressed to effectively use EEIO tools in GPP, especially in European context. The use cases in focus are: how to produce an overall inventory of direct and indirect emissions for different procurement categories, and how to differentiate between green and non-green products. Some practical problems that must be tackled are: the consistent linkage of procurement data sets to EEIO databases, and the disaggregation of EEIO sectors to more granular of green / non-green products. We discuss potential approaches and their pros and cons. We analyze the specific challenge of creating a CPV-NACE mapping that would link demand driven procurement product taxonomies with supply driven economic activity classifications. We outline a methodology for disaggregating EEIO business sectors to constituent product categories with differentiated environmental impact while preserving the accounting constraints satisfied by the aggregate databases.

Portable Standardized Graph Formats for Input-Output Databases

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Accessing the wealth of statistical data in Input-Output databases

There are currently several important global initiatives that compile and make available statistical economic input-output data (IO). This is done typically on a multi-regional basis (covering many countries and regions, hence MRIO) reflecting the fact that international trade is (still) very much a reality. Environmentally extended input-output (EEIO) databases that are in turn based on economic activity IO data, are increasingly used to examine environmental footprints of economic activities and play an important role in the attribution and screening of regional and sectoral contributions to environmental stresses.

EXIOBASE

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this section of the Equinox Reference App documentation we cover the details around the use of EXIOBASE 3. The assumption is that you have a working instance of Equinox running, and have access to its code directory.

tailRisk Implemented Risk Measures

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Implemented Risk Measures

TailRisk implements a range of commonly (or not so commonly) used risk measures:

tailRisk Random Variable Representations

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Random Variable Representations

For context around this aspect of tailRisk, refer to: Random Variable Representation

tailRisk supports two ways of representing in-memory a (one-dimensional) random variable:

using a histogram type container
using a flexible container of sampling results (realizations)

The Pros and Cons of Full Stack Risk Management

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Motivation

An Open Risk Academy user recently asked if there is a real-world, end-to-end open-source project (in particular, written in the popular data science language Python) that walks through the entire (risk model) workflow: namely, collecting data, engineering features, building a risk model, iteratively optimizing it, and drawing actionable conclusions. It is a very good question. For many people learning theory in the context of real-world practice is essential and such an end-to-end example obviously helps connect all the dots of data driven risk management. But like with all good questions, the answer is not simple. In this blog post we explore some of the issues involved in a broader context.

The Green Public Procurement Challenge (Online Game)

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Motivation

The substantial potential of Green Public Procurement towards achieving sustainability objectives is well known. But the transition process involves significant complexity and implementation barriers. The combination of diverse categories of products and services, each with their own specific sustainability and knowledge requirements and the need for augmented organizational capacities to handle expanded information flows is a formidable challenge. In a new and free online game we introduce some aspects of these challenges in a simplified, fun setting that helps highlight some of the considerations involved.

Using the Kraljic Matrix in Green Public Procurement

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Motivation

Sustainable Public Procurement involves significant complexity and implementation barriers as it involves diverse categories of products and services, each with their own specific sustainability and knowledge requirements. It also requires augmented organizational capacities to handle expanded information flows that provide more holistic views on market capabilities and supply chain interdependencies.

On the ex-ante evaluation of Green Public Procurement criteria

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Motivation

GPP is defined as a process whereby public authorities seek to procure goods, services and works with a reduced environmental impact throughout their life-cycle when compared to goods, services and works with the same primary function that would otherwise be procured. Unpacking that definition helps pin down many important characteristics of the information gathering and processing that must take place to support this major sustainability transition process. A most striking high-level aspect is the vast scope of this process: With public procurement forming anywhere from 10% to 30% of an economy, there is vast variability in underlying economic activities, environmental impacts, market characteristics and procurement procedures. Nevertheless, the definition of GPP demands a certain degree of coherency across this vast domain, not least to ensure the cost and energy of public resources dedicated to GPP are effective in achieving their target.

The role of EEIO frameworks in Green Public Procurement monitoring

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Motivation

The public sector avails of significant purchasing power when contracting with the private sector for goods, works and services. This provides it with meaningful leverage across a good fraction of economic activity. Significant efforts are underway worldwide to utilize this leverage towards achieving sustainability goals. Yet implementing sustainable procurement at scale remains a task of enormous complexity that requires significant investment in different areas: in developing suitable policies, in establishing appropriate information flows and methodologies and, not least, in embedding these new practices and behaviors across swathes of economic activity.

In this blog post we provide a brief overview of how an important class of economic analysis tools termed EEIO, or environmentally extended input-output frameworks, can be utilized to support the implementation of key public procurement sustainability objectives. We sketch the nature of these tools, how they can be used to provide relevant information, and the pros and cons of such an approach.

Taking Stock of the United Nations Open Source Principles

Tue, 06 May 2025 10:45:58 +0200

What are the UN Open Source Principles?

The UN Open Source Principles is a set of eight high-level guiding principles that were recently adopted by the UN Chief Executive Board’s Digital Technology Network (DTN). They open a new window and provide guidelines to drive collaboration and Open Source adoption within the UN and globally. They send a strong signal of the importance of open source and how individuals and organisations need to act to benefit but also support a thriving and sustainable open source community.

17, Sustainable Public Procurement, Part I, Emissions Attribution

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 17: Sustainable Public Procurement. Part I: Emissions Attribution

Public Procurement represents a major opportunity to catalyze the transition of economies towards more sustainable patterns but faces important challenges. We review mechanisms that can help address key pain points through the use of open standards, open data and open source tools. In the first part we frame the overall task of Sustainable Public Procurement as an instance of portfolio management. We outline three distinct information processing pillars that are relevant in this context. We focus here on the task of measuring and attributing greenhouse gas emissions to an existing procurement portfolio.

How to Random Walk on Supply and Use Tables

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How to Random Walk on Supply and Use Tables (and why bother?)

Presentation given at the 16th Input-Output Workshop, March 27st 2025, Groningen, Netherlands.

We discuss how Supply and Use tables can be mapped naturally into Bipartite Graph Networks (in various Open and Closed economy configurations).

Why are there so many concentration indices?

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

There are dozens upon dozes of indices that aim to measure concentration risk (and related concepts such as diversity or inequality). Why such a proliferation of alternatives? There are multiple reasons, which we will attempt to identify in this post. This enumeration prompts us to dig deeper into the nature of concentration indices and their various pros and cons.

What Can We Learn From Random Walks on Input-Output Tables

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

We imagine the random propagation of money flows through simplified economic networks as a sequence of monetary transactions following a stochastic process. We follow the journey of a cash amount. Whenever a transaction in this chain implies an environmental impact, that impact is recorded and cumulated. Computing the expected outcome of such flows reproduces the standard results of environmentally extended input-output models. The random walk interpretation allows the computation of various additional statistical properties, one example being estimating a variance of environmental impact or intrinsic uncertainty around the central estimate. We interpret this uncertainty as being a concentration risk measure.

16, Random Walks on Supply and Use Graphs

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 16: Follow the Money: Random Walks on Supply and Use Graphs

We explore how to organize Environmentally-Extended Input-Output frameworks (EEIO), and in particular their Supply and Use Table (SUT) formulation, as graphs. Working directly with SUT systems instead of converting to symmetric IO matrices involves fewer assumptions and (in principle) higher resolution in expressing environmental impacts. We elaborate first on the representation of SUT tables as directed, weighted bipartite graphs. We discuss both closed (circular) and open system configurations, featuring source and sink nodes. These are modeled as regular and absorbing Markov Chains respectively. We outline a probabilistic random walk framework that realizes mathematically the colloquial Follow the Money concept. This enables computing a range of various existing and new metrics using the EEIO data. As an illustration, besides the standard environmental footprint metric, we introduce the concept of footprint variance or the intrinsic variability of estimates. We illustrate the overall setup using a classic numerical example from the EEIO literature.

Updated Open Risk Academy Course: Input-Output Models with Python

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Expanding on the popular Input-Output Models with Python course

The SFI32064 course is a DeepDive with nine segments, exploring Input-Output models using Python and the Pymrio library. The following is an updated overview of it contents.

tailRisk Library 0.2 Release

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

TailRisk Library Release

tailRisk is a C++ library for the calculation of various tail risk measures. Tail Risk is a core concept in Quantitative Risk Management , relevant in particular in Market Risk and Credit Risk Management. Tail Risk is both an informal term denoting unusually occurring tail events and a more precise term denoting concrete classes of risk measures

The Open Risk Manual as Android App

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Open Risk Manual is now available also as an Android App

The Open Risk Manual is an open online repository of information (wiki) about risk management in all its forms. The Manual is developed and maintained by Open Risk. Our objective is to create a comprehensive, detailed, authoritative collection of risk management resources that are easily accessible by anybody, anywhere - well, network access is currently required!

EEIO in Sustainable Finance

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

EEIO in Sustainable Finance: Challenges and Opportunities

Presentation given at the 15th I-O Workshop, March 1st 2024, Osnabrueck, Germany

We discuss the overlap of EEIO tools with Sustainable Finance applications. In particular their potential role in Portfolio Management.

Representing Matrices as JSON Objects: Part 2 - Sparse Matrices

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 08:48:35 +0000

Recap of Part 1 of the Matrix-to-JSON Post Series

In the first installment of this series, Part 1 we discussed the motivation behind representing and serializing matrices as JSON objects. We defined relevant concepts and in particular the concept of unrolling the matrix into a one-dimensional array and the notion of Column and Row Major orders. We outlined some use cases of interest and initiated a benchmarking exercise that looks into various R and Python JSON serialization utilities (available at the matrix2json repository).

Towards a Faceted Taxonomy of Financial Services

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 11:26:04 +0100

Who Needs a New Financial Services Taxonomy?

Our age is increasingly dominated by the dual challenges and opportunities of the sustainability transition on the one hand, and digital transformation on the other. We witness emerging new financial domains with novel names such as Fintech , or TechFin, or various combinations and hues of Green and Sustainable in Sustainable Finance and we see forces that are reshaping the direction of travel for the financial industry.

Equinox Release 0.8

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Release 0.8

Release 0.8 of equinox.

Download

15, Tensor Representations of ActivityPub Networks

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 11:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 15: Tensor Representations of ActivityPub Networks

In this third Open Risk White Paper on Connecting the Dots we explore representations of online communication networks that are organized according to the ActivityPub protocol. We discuss the main relevant features of the protocol and the broader application ecosystem around it that shapes emerging online network topologies. We develop a stylized description of ActivityPub compliant networks as a mathematical multilayer network. Tensor representations of such complex graphs generalize the more familiar matrix algebra tools and can be useful in various ways: On the one hand they help empirical work in analyzing the characteristics of such networks, on the other they enable simulating and exploring network behavior.

Connecting the Dots, Tensor Representations of Activitypub Networks

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 11:13:59 +0100

What are ActivityPub Networks?

ActivityPub is a technical specification towards decentralized (more precisely, federated) social networking (termed the Fediverse) based upon the exchange of ActivityStreams messages that follow the Activity Vocabulary. The ActivityPub proposal has been standardized and published by the W3C and has motivated the design of several federated social networking systems.

Open Risk Academy Course: Tensor Calculations with the Eigen C++ Library

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 11:35:13 +0200

Course Objective

The objective of the course is to provide an introduction to using Eigen::Tensor as a high-level library for using Tensors in C++ projects.

Awesome Sustainable Finance

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 11:35:13 +0200

An Awesome List for Sustainable Finance.

A curated list of sustainable finance resources. The focus of the list is on code (tools, libraries, frameworks etc.) that fairly directly support any type of sustainable finance effort and open data that are useful in a sustainable finance context.

An Introduction to the Copernicus Satellite Data Ecosystem

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 11:59:49 +0000

Course Content:

This course is an introduction the Copernicus Satellite Data Ecosystem. It covers the following topics:

Getting to know the Copernicus Programme
- Overview of the Copernicus Programme
- Further Resources
The Copernicus Data Ecosystem
- Copernicus Data Resources
Tools and Resources
- Platforms, Tools and API’s
A worked out example
- Using the Python OpenEO API

Who Is This Course For:

Data Scientists / Data Engineers in any Domain that need to use satellite data

Crash Course on Input-Output Model Mathematics

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 11:59:49 +0000

Summary

A brief review of the linear algebra and matrix theory concepts underpinning standard environmentally extended input-output models.

Content

This brief introduction in Input-Output Model mathematics discusses the basic elements of linear algebra that are necessary to understand the standard Input-Output models, including their Environmental impact extensions.

Matrix theory is the main subject covered here as it is the most dominant mathematical tool used in this area (though other parts of mathematics do find applications in Input-Output analysis). The focus is on the notation and mathematical objects commonly used, not the economic interpretation or any mathematical proofs.

Deep Dive Course on Tensor calculations with Eigen

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 11:59:49 +0000

Course Content:

This course is an introduction to Tensor calculations with Eigen, a popular C++ library for working with numerical arrays and linear algebra. It covers the following topics:

We learn the concept and techniques of the Eigen Tensor class
How to declare, initialize Tensors of various ranks and types and how to access Tensor elements
Elementary unary and binary operations involving Tensors
More complex operations (reductions, contractions)
Modifying the shape of Tensors

Who Is This Course For:

Developers in any Domain that need to use higher-dimensional numerical data containers

Input-Output Model Interactivities

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 11:59:49 +0000

Introduction

This is a short introductory course on Input-Output analysis that focuses on stylized interactive calculations that can be performed directly within the online reading sections.

The level of the course is introductory. There are no significant mathematical nor computer science prerequisites. The course should be useful for anybody wishing to obtain insights into the flow of the basic calculations behind modern large-scale Environmentally Extended Input-Output Models.

The Climate Dictionary Quiz

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 11:59:49 +0000

Summary

A multipe-choice Quiz based on the Climate Dictionary developed by the United Nations Development Programme. The quiz provides an educational tool to enable deeper understanding of essential terminology around Climate Change and Climate Risk.

Content

The quiz consists of circa 65 questions of multiple choice type. The objective is to enable anybody interested in climate change to benchmark their knowledge of these key terms.

The Green Public Procurement Challenge (Online Game)

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 11:59:49 +0000

The GPP challenge game is hosted in the sustainability.town, an online platform dedicated to hands-on demonstrations and applications of Sustainable Portfolio Management concepts and methodologies. It is part of a new series of serious games covering a wide range of important concepts in an engaging manner.

Course Level and Type

	Introductory Level	Core Level	Advanced Level
Non-Technical	GPP01079
Technical

Enroll and Get Started with GPP01079

Climate Dictionary Quiz

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 11:35:13 +0200

The Climate Dictionary is an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) aimed at providing people worldwide with a simplified guide to understand climate change. The Dictionary (first published Aug 2023) seeks to bridge the gap between complex scientific jargon such as present in the IPCC publications and other scientific bodies and the public.

Electrifying the Doughnut: Simplified Visions of Sustainable Finance

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

June 21 2023 marks the sixth annual #ShowYourStripes Day - a time when meteorologists and other climate communicators around the world raise awareness of our warming planet by displaying colorful visuals of climate change. The warming stripe graphics are representations of the change in temperature over the past 100+ years (here we use the global average). Each stripe represents the temperature averaged over a year. The stripes typically start around the year 1900 and finish in 2022.

Equinox 0.7 release focuses on scope 2 (electricity) emissions

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

GHG Accounting offers a means of measuring the direct and indirect emissions to the Earth’s Biosphere of CO2 and its equivalent gases from industrial and other activities. GHG Accounting is a rapidly developing area that has come to receive increased focus in the context of accelerating Climate Change. Given that the generation of electricity and heat accounts for around a third of global GHG emissions electricity consumers have incentives to proactively reduce those emissions by reducing electricity demand, or by shifting energy supply by procuring alternative lower-carbon or renewable resources.

Equinox Release 0.7

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Release 0.7

Release 0.7 of equinox introduces the Scope 2 Reporting use case.

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14, Integrated Energy Accounting using Relational Databases

Sat, 20 May 2023 11:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 14: Integrated energy accounting using relational databases

In this Open Risk White Paper we demonstrate a concrete implementation of an integrated energy accounting framework using relational database technologies. The framework enables accounting of non-financial disclosures (such as the physical and embodied energy footprints of economic transactions) while enforcing the familiar double-entry balance constraints used to produce conventional (monetary) accounts and financial statements. In addition, it allows enforcing constraints associated with the flow and transformations of energy that can happen inside the organizational perimeter.

13, Techniques for Federated Analysis

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 13: Federated Credit Systems, Part II: Techniques for Federated Data Analysis

In this Open Risk White Paper, the second of series focusing on Federated Credit Systems, we explore techniques for federated credit data analysis. Building on the first paper where we outlined the overall architecture, essential actors and information flows underlying various business models of credit provision, in this step we focus on the enabling arrangements and techniques for building Federated Credit Data Systems and enabling Federated Analysis.

Mathematical Representations of Credit Portfolio Data

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 13:38:20 +0100

Course Objective

Digging into the meaning of credit data collections, the logic that binds them together towards understanding what they can be used for and what limitations and issues they may be affected by, this new course in the Credit Portfolio Management category explores a new angle to look at an old practice.

Mathematical Representations of Credit Portfolio Data

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 13:38:20 +0100

Course Objective

Financial Literacy

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 07:27:55 +0000

This course category is a collection of online resources to assist with financial literacy (in the broadest sense). Financial Literacy is the general level of understanding by different segments of the population of how Finance and the Financial System work.

It is a combination of the financial awareness, knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours necessary to make sound financial decisions and ultimately achieve individual financial well-being.

Mortgage Modeling

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 07:27:55 +0000

This course category is a sub-category of the Risk Modeling using Python category that focuses specifically on Mortgage Models of various types. Mortgages (Mortage Loan) denotes loans securitized against some real estate. It is one of the most widely used financial products worldwide. In it simplest form it is a loan secured by the property being financed. The property is thus mortgaged and in the extreme case where the borrower cannot or will not repay the loan, the lender typically has legal rights on the property.

Processing Agency Mortgage Data with Awk, Pandas and Django. Part 1, Static Data

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 07:27:55 +0000

Course Content:

This crash course illustrates how to process loan-level US Agency mortgage data using awk, pandas and django. The first part of the course focuses on static (acquisition) type attributes. This part covers the following topics:

Processing Agency Mortgage Data with Awk, Pandas and Django. Part 2, Dynamic Data

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 07:27:55 +0000

Course Content:

This crash course illustrates how to process loan-level US Agency mortgage data using awk, pandas and django. The second part of the course focuses on the performing book. This part covers the following topics:

First public release of the Solstice simulation framework

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 17:31:31 +0100

Modeling economic networks and their dynamics

Economic networks are the primary abstractions though which we can conceptualize the state (condition) and evolution of economic interactions. This simply reflects the fact that human economies are quite fundamentally systems of interacting actors (or nodes in a network) with transient or more permanent relations between them.

Solstice Functionality Overview

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 15:47:20 +0000

Solstice is a Simulation framework. In one sentence, given an initial configuration of some economic network it will simulate future states according to a range of possible scenarios and models and it will output the state of the network at future dates.

Data Engineering

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the collection of Open Risk Academy Data Engineering courses. Data Engineering is a discipline that focuses on building of Information Technology systems that enable the collection and usage of Data. This data is used to enable subsequent Data Analysis and Data Science

This category includes courses that cover more technical techniques (programming stacks, data formats etc.) that are applicable across a range of data science and risk management disciplines.

White Paper: Deep Linking Financial and Energy Accounting

Sat, 24 Sep 2022 14:23:31 +0200

Integrated Energy Accounting is keeping track and reporting on an entity’s detailed energy footprint (primary inputs, transformations and waste generation) not as an addendum to financial accounting and reporting but as a deeply-linked extension that is subject to the same level of rigor.

12, Deep-Linking Financial and Energy Accounting

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 12: Deep-Linking Financial and Energy Accounting

We develop a conceptual framework for integrated accounting that produces (where possible) non-financial disclosures subject to the same double-entry balance constraints as those used to produce conventional financial statements and automatically ensures any additional conservation laws are satisfied. We identify the key ingredients required for such a rigorous integrated accounting framework, in terms of concepts, postulates and design choices. Our focus and concrete use case is built around energy accounting, keeping track on an entity’s detailed energy footprint (primary inputs, transformations and waste generation) as an extension of its standard financial accounting and reporting. The central tool is the use of multidimensional double-entry bookkeeping which tracks quantitative information characterizing economic objects beyond their monetary values. This choice ensures the enforcement of both classic balance constraints and any applicable energy conservation laws. Further tools and techniques concern the aggregation and reporting of dual (monetary and physical) dimensions of an entity’s accounting state. The framework is documented using mathematical notation.

How Open Data and Open Source can support Green Public Procurement - Part 4

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 13:52:22 +0200

Introduction

In this fourth and final installment we will discuss how the data framework we have developed thus far can be mapped into classic portfolio management concepts and categories, and thus, how one can articulate the concept of sustainable procurement management on a portfolio basis. The concepts and analytic methodologies of financial portfolio management¹ can significantly enhance the toolkit available to practitioners and, in sense, connects the domain of Green Public Procurement to other ongoing initiatives in broader Sustainable Finance.

How Open Data and Open Source can support Green Public Procurement - Part 3

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 16:52:22 +0200

Introduction

This is the third in a series of posts where we explore the role of Open Data and Open Source in enabling and accelerating the broad based effort towards Green Public Procurement (GPP). In this third installment we will link procurement entities to private sector sellers and, through the sectoral profile of the procurement contract, (CPV category) we will infer the amount of CO2 emissions that can be attributed to these activities.

How Open Data and Open Source can support Green Public Procurement - Part 2

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 15:03:59 +0200

Introduction

This is the second in a series of posts where we explore the role of Open Data and Open Source in enabling and accelerating the broad based effort towards Green Public Procurement (GPP).

How Open Data and Open Source can support Green Public Procurement - Part 1

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 10:03:59 +0200

Introduction

In a series of posts we will explore the role of Open Data and Open Source in enabling and accelerating the broad based effort towards Green Public Procurement (GPP). There are several important (and possibly obscure) terms in this sentence, so our first order of business will be to unpack them.

Equinox Release 0.6

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Release 0.6

Release 0.6 of equinox introduces a second use case with summary national statistics (country / sector), visualizations, fixtures and the adoption of BDD testing framework

Download

EU Datathon 2022 preselection for the Equinox platform

Sun, 29 May 2022 10:03:59 +0200

What is the EU Datathon?

The EU Datathon is an annual Open Data competition organised by the Publications Office of the European Union since 2017. The competitions are organised to create new value for citizens through innovation and promoting the use of open data, in particular the datasets available on the official portal for European data.

Equinox Release 0.5

Thu, 26 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Release 0.5

With Release 0.5 of equinox we start the more formal tracking of development.

The Equinox alpha release 0.5 includes a complete data set to be used in testing Use Case 1. Use case 1 takes the perspective of local authority (a city) that wants to examine the footprint of its city-wide procurement portfolio

Equinox 0.4 release focuses on green public procurement functionality

Tue, 10 May 2022 10:51:58 +0200

Equinox 0.4 Release

Equinox is an open source platform that supports holistic risk management and reporting in the context of Sustainable Portfolio Management. The platform integrates geospatial information with applicable regulatory and industry standards, for example the GHG Protocol (accounting for Project based, Corporate and City-Wide greenhouse gas emissions), the IPCC Emissions Factor database and further reference data, the PCAF attribution methodologies (and more) to provide a holistic view of the footprint of both individual projects and portfolios.

Two New Taxonomies Introduced in the Open Risk Manual

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 13:34:46 +0200

The Role of Open Risk Manual Taxonomies

A taxonomy is the categorization of concepts. It can be a very useful tool in supporting effective knowledge management. Fundamentally a taxonomy is a scheme of classification, typically a hierarchical classification, in which things or concepts are organized into groups or types of increasing specificity.

Functionality Overview

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

Supporting the transition to Sustainable Finance requires up-to-date data, relevant and trusted models and effective usable tools that are fully embedded in the organization. The Equinox platform is a cloud based framework that supports sustainable portfolio management activity using an entirely modern approach.

The IPCC EFDB Database

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 15:47:20 +0000

The overall objective of the IPCC Emissions Factors database (EFDB) is to be an always up-to-date companion for the IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventory that is seen as a worldwide resource for greenhouse gas inventory developers.

Input-Output Models as Graph Networks

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:51:47 +0000

Course Objective

The objective of the course is to discuss the relation of economic input-output models with graph theory and networks.

Input-Output Models as Graph Networks

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:51:47 +0000

Course Objective

The objective of the course is to discuss the relation of economic input-output models with graph theory and networks.

Academy CrashProgram Demo

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:34:47 +0000

Summary

This crash course is an introduction to the main elements of an Academy course (it is a course about courses!). The course takes less than an hour to complete. It is recommended to new users that are not familiar with eLearning environments.

How Does The Course Help

You can also use the course to test whether your can get full access to the academy courses using your particular device / browser.

Introduction to the Open Risk Manual

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:34:39 +0000

Summary

This short course is an introduction to the Open Risk Manual, covering the following topics:

Background Information
A Brief User Manual
More Advanced Uses
Mobile Use
Contributing to the Manual

Course Level and Type

	Introductory Level	Core Level	Advanced Level
Non-Technical	GEN13054
Technical

Enroll and Get Started with GEN13054

Crossword Puzzles

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:34:33 +0000

Summary

Open Risk Crossword Puzzles: A collection of crossword puzzles build around specific themes

Content

Non-Performing Loan Crossword Puzzle Game
Sustainable Finance Crossword Puzzle Game
Cyber Risk Crossword Puzzle Game
Fintech Crossword Puzzle

Course Level and Type

	Introductory Level	Core Level	Advanced Level
Non-Technical		QUI29052
Technical

Enroll and Get Started with QUI29052

Banking Regulation

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:34:25 +0000

This category of Open Risk Academy courses covers general topics around banking regulation, regulatory initiatives and related topics.

Banking Regulators are entities that are responsible for the supervision or regulation of some aspect of the Financial System, with the objective to ensure that the operation of that system remains within mandated constraints.

An overview of graph methods in data science

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:33:03 +0000

Summary

This course is a CrashProgram (short course) introducing the different ways in which the graph concept enters various data science applications. The course is at an introductory technical level. It requires comfort with mathematical notation and (optionally) ability to run the provided python code with various graph examples. Reviewing the very diverse uses of graph structures will reveal the richness of graphs as data science tools.

21 Ways to Visualize a Timeseries

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:32:20 +0000

What this course is about (and what it isn’t)

With the ever more widespread adoption of Data Science tools (defined loosely as the intensive use of data in decision-making), there is strong interest in Visualization as an effective means for humans to understand information at various stages of the data lifecycle.

There is a large variety of open source data visualization tools which can produce an ever more bewildering variety of visualization types:

Measuring Name Concentrations

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:29:19 +0000

Summary

This course is a DeepDive into measuring name concentrations in credit portfolios.

Intro to Concentration Measurement using Python

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:29:13 +0000

Summary

This course is a CrashProgram in the use of python for risk modelling purposes, in particular credit concentration measurement.

Who Is This Course For

There is little or no prior knowledge of concentration risk measurement but general background in credit risk management is useful for context.

Exploratory Risk Data Analysis

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:29:08 +0000

Summary

This course is a CrashProgram (short course) introducing exploratory data analysis.

Prerequisites

The course can be pursued on a standalone basis. It is advisable to pursue the course after DAT31046 (Risk Data Review) which discusses a review of the data from a data quality validation perspective.

Getting Started with Open Source

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:29:03 +0000

Summary

This course collects resources and activities to facilitate those involved in open source risk modelling projects.

Course Level and Type

	Introductory Level	Core Level	Advanced Level
Non-Technical
Technical	GEN13031

Enroll and Get Started with GEN13031

Risk Management Q&A

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:28:56 +0000

Summary

A forum for risk management questions and answers. Nothing is too complicated or too simple!

Course Level and Type

	Introductory Level	Core Level	Advanced Level
Non-Technical	RMQ29035
Technical

Enroll and Get Started with RMQ29035

Intro to Credit Concentration

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:28:50 +0000

Summary

This course is a Crash Program introduction to the topic of credit risk concentrations: how to identify, measure and manage excess credit exposure, an essential risk management discipline for any credit portfolio.

Content

The course covers the following topics:

Getting Started with the Open Risk Academy

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:28:45 +0000

Summary

If this is your first time in the Academy you can familiarize yourself by going through the Demo which includes manuals, study plan suggestions and more.

Requirements

The course is completely introductory and does not have any prerequisite except a clear and open mind!

EU Financial Regulations Quiz

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:28:30 +0000

Summary

A quiz about financial regulation in the European Union. Test your knowledge about the diverse initiatives that are reshaping the financial landscape in Europe.

Course Level and Type

	Introductory Level	Core Level	Advanced Level
Non-Technical		QUI29049
Technical

Enroll and Get Started with QUI29049

Discussion @ the Commons

Micro Course on Risk Management

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:28:22 +0000

Summary

In the Shortest Possible Course on Risk Management we try to condense in 15 intense minutes the essence of risk management!

Requirements

The course is completely introductory and does not have any prerequisite except a clear and open mind!

UK Pillar II

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:28:17 +0000

Summary

This course is a DeepDive into the UK regulatory framework around credit risk concentrations and their treatment under Pillar II. The context is provided by Consultation Paper CP1/15 which establishes benchmark Pillar II capital add-on methodologies for all main credit concentration risk categories.

The Puzzle of Money

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:28:11 +0000

Summary

A crossword puzzle around money topics to celebrate Global Money Week

Course Level and Type

	Introductory Level	Core Level	Advanced Level
Non-Technical	GEN13061
Technical

Enroll and Get Started with GEN13061

Discussion @ the Commons

Measuring Sector Concentrations

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:28:03 +0000

Summary

This course is a 4 Session DeepDive into measuring sector concentrations in credit portfolios.

An introduction to Semantic Data with Python

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:27:55 +0000

Summary

This course is a CrashProgram (short course) in the use of Python to work with Semantic Data (RDF / OWL)

Requirements

The course is at a medium technical level. It requires some familiarity with python (and a working installation). On the semantic data side it requires knowledge of basic concepts around files and representation formats for data.

Intro to GeoJSON

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:27:49 +0000

Summary

This course is a CrashProgram (short course) introducing the GeoJSON specification for the encoding of geospatial features.

Course objectives

You will be able to confidently discuss the geojson standard
You will be able to dive into geojson related development projects with confidence

The course is live at the Open Risk Academy, this repository hosts the python scripts used in the course. The scripts can be used standalone but documentation is minimal.

Periodic Table of Risk

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:27:43 +0000

Summary

A visually pleasing logical decomposition of different risk types using the analogy of the periodic table. The app offers an interactive exploration of the risk profile of different business models

Course Level and Type

	Introductory Level	Core Level	Advanced Level
Non-Technical	PTR29042
Technical

Enroll and Get Started with PTR29042

Loan Level Templates Using Python

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:27:37 +0000

Summary

This course is a CrashProgram in the use of python for credit portfolio modelling purposes, in particular working with data templates and spreadsheets.

Content

The course covers the following topics:

Basel on Credit Concentration Risk

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:27:30 +0000

Summary

This course is a 4 Session DeepDive into regulatory aspects around concentration risks in credit portfolios, focusing on compliance requirements of the Large Exposure Framework and the Pillar II.

Content

The course covers the following topics:

Credit Migrations using TransitionMatrix

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:27:23 +0000

Summary

This course is a CrashProgram (short course) in the use of Python and the package TransitionMatrix for analysing credit migration data.

Requirements

The course is at a medium technical level. It requires some familiarity with python (and a working installation that includes the common numpy/scipy libraries). On the risk modelling side it requires knowledge of basic credit rating migration concepts.

Credit Portfolio Management

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:27:04 +0000

Courses around Credit Portfolio Management.

This collection might be particularly relevant for users of the Equinox and openNPL platform for Credit Portfolio Management.

General Courses

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:26:04 +0000

This category includes various general topics. It includes demos and tools that demonstrate the Academy eLearning platform to new users but also introductions to other Open Risk resources like the Open Risk Manual and our Open Source projects

The demos enable users to sample a broader area of courses and trial out new technologies. Users can enroll and start a course at any time. Courses in this category is available to any registered user for free. The course titles should be self-explanatory.

Data Science

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:25:59 +0000

This category covers the collection of Open Risk Academy Data Science courses. Data Science is an emerging interdisciplinary field that aims to extract and utilize knowledge from diverse data sets, which are typically large.

The field is rather loosely defined as it applies to several different domains with a varying degree on reliance on:

Risk Modeling Using Python

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:25:54 +0000

The courses in this category utilize open source tools and frameworks, either developed by Open Risk or available via open source licenses. Open Risk advocates and supports open source, transparent, peer reviewable, methodologies and risk models. From the Great Financial Crisis, to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the Sustainability Challenge and onwards, time and again we see conventional (proprietary and closed) risk models and risk management tools being challenged, failing to deliver their purported utility when it is needed most.

Credit Concentration Courses

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:25:47 +0000

The Credit Concentration Cycle is a collection of online courses covering the diverse aspects of Credit Concentration Risk Management. Credit Risk Concentration refers to disproportionally large risk exposure to specific credit risks (as opposed to a diversified risk profile).

Regulatory frameworks generally recognize the following specific concentrations risks:

Risk Management

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:25:40 +0000

Risk Management is a general term that collectively denotes the techniques, practices or behaviors that aim to identify, measure and mitigate risks to an individual or an organization. Informal Risk Management as practiced by individuals is the domain of intuitive decision making which typically does not involve rigorous Risk Analysis, does not require additional training and does not employ elaborate tools or methodologies.

Input-Output Models with Python

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:25:28 +0000

Summary

This course is a DeepDive with nine segments, exploring Input-Output models using Python and the pymrio library. The course is at a core technical level. It requires working familiarity with Python, basic linear algebra and elements of economic systems. Step by step we explore how one can define and perform useful operations in Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis.

Sustainable Finance

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:25:22 +0000

Sustainable Finance denotes financial systems, services and products that are integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG Criteria) into business and/or investment decisions such that current social, environmental, and livelihood needs are not compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Sustainable finance practices are rapidly evolving:

Credit Contagion

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:25:01 +0000

Summary

A Crash Course on Modelling Credit Contagion

Course Level and Type

	Introductory Level	Core Level	Advanced Level
Non-Technical
Technical			MCC03008

Enroll and Get Started with MCC03008

Discussion @ the Commons

Managing Loan Portfolios Using MongoDB

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:24:34 +0000

Summary

This course is a CrashProgram in the use of the MongoDB database in conjunction with Python for credit portfolio management purposes.

Content

The course covers the following topics:

Risk Data Review

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 17:23:55 +0000

Summary

This course is a CrashProgram (short course) introducing the concept of a structured review of risk data.

Outcomes

Step by step we build the knowledge required to review the suitability of data for a given purpose and how to report the findings.

Open Risk Academy Course: Input-Output Models with Python

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 11:39:27 +0200

What are Input-Output Models?

Environmentally Extended Multi-Regional Input-Output (EE-MRIO) tables describe economic relationships of economic actors (e.g. industrial sectors) operating within and between regions and their environmental repercussions.

An EE MRIO augments the more basic and historically first proposed Input-Output Models (IO) with additional datasets and/or modeling assumptions in order to provide insights into the environmental foorprint of economic activity. Presently, the emphasis on negative externalities of economic activity (e.g., climate change, biodiversity loss) turns EE MRIO models into a useful conceptual and analytic tool. Yet a good grounding on the underlying IO models is a prerequisite and this is the focus of this new course that is now available at the Open Risk Academy.

Exploring Ten Years of FOSDEM talks

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 10:10:14 +0100

FOSDEM is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized, two-day conference celebrating free and open-source software development. The conference has a geographic focus on European open source ecosystems and projects. FOSDEM is primarily aimed at developers, across the entire range of software and aims to enable them to meet and discuss the status of projects.

Representing Matrices as JSON Objects: Part 1 - General Considerations

Thu, 13 Jan 2022 16:39:18 +0100

Motivation and Objective

Representing a Matrix as a JSON object is a task that appears in many modern data science contexts, in particular when one wants to exchange matrix data online in a portable manner. There is no universally agreed way to achieve this task and various options are available depending on the matrix data characteristics and the programming tools and computational environment one has available.

Integrating the IPCC Emissions Factors Database Into Equinox

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 21:08:02 +0100

Equinox is an open source platform that supports the holistic risk management and reporting of major sustainable finance projects (the financing of projects with material physical footprint) such as project finance.

Equinox aims to integrate in the database a number reference databases that facilitate tasks of sustainable portfolio management. In the current focus such reference material concerns the emissions factors for various processes and activities. In the latest (Solstice Day!) update of the Equinox Project we discuss the integration of reference data an in particular greenhouse gas emissions factors as catalogued in the IPCC Emissions Factors database (EFDB).

Open Risk White Paper: Sustainable Portfolio Management - Attribution and Allocation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 14:53:02 +0100

The frontpage graphic is adapted from Steffen et al. “Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet”. Science (2015). The Planetary Boundaries concept was proposed in 2009 by this group of Earth system and environmental scientists. The group suggested that finding a “safe operating space for humanity” is a precondition for sustainable development. The framework is based on scientific evidence that human actions since the Industrial Revolution have become the main driver of global environmental change.

11, Sustainable Portfolio Management of GHG

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 11: Sustainable Portfolio Management: Attribution and Allocation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions

We develop an analytic framework that synthesizes current approaches to sustainable portfolio management in the context of addressing climate change. We discuss the different required information layers, approaches to emissions accounting, attribution and forward-looking limit frameworks implementing carbon budget constraints.

5000 Members of Sustainable Finance Subreddit

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 20:38:58 +0200

Interest in Sustainable Finance is growing

What is “Sustainable Finance”? A working definition is: A financial system that takes into account environmental, social and governance considerations to ensure long term sustainability of the human economy.

You can imagine that with a scope and ambition that sweeping, the devil hidden in the details will be of gargantuan size. The definitions of so-called ESG factors, the incorporation of sustainability into business strategies, the governance, policies and risk management applicable to ESG Risks, the ESG and climate-related disclosures and the development of “green” financial products are all topics that combine urgency, complexity and potentially dramatic impact.

Sustainability Is Not a Point It Is a Surface of Possibilities

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 10:14:09 +0200

Bending the Curve - Sustainability Conceptualized as a One Dimensional Exercise

The opening of the Global Scenario Group report “Bending the Curve: Toward Global Sustainability” by Paul Raskin, Gilberto Gallopin, Pablo Gutman, Al Hammond and Rob Swart, published in 1998 goes as follows:

Class Inheritance in Data Science

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 10:43:59 +0200

Summary

In this short course we explore how some programming languages, data formats, database API’s and web frameworks handle hierarchical classes.

Content

Object-oriented programming and techniques (OOP) such as using classes and inheritance are common in many application programming environments but alas don’t “travel well” outside computer memory. The potentially intricate relationships of objects (both the data they hold and the meaning and possible uses of the data) are not easy to transfer (except of-course by full replication of code and data). Hence when considering data science tasks and objectives that involving exchange of data, the transition from object hierarchies that live inside memory, to data structures that can be exchanged with another computer is not straightforward.

Open Risk Hydra GSOC 2021 Credit Risk Project Wrap Up

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 10:33:08 +0200

The GSOC 2021 collaboration between Open Risk and the Hydra Ecosystem - Project Wrap-Up

Google Summer of Code 2021 came and went amid the still ongoing worldwide pandemic experience. Open Risk was happy to join forces with the Hydra Ecosystem in exploring a proof-of-concept for next generation API’s using Hydra.

Offline Availability of Open Risk Manual Content

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 15:09:09 +0200

Offline versus Online

In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity over digital networks, and offline indicates a disconnected state. Both states have many sub-divisions. For example the type online access varies enormously according to the bandwidth and latency of connections. Similarly, people may be “offline” as not having network access or completely unplugged, as in not having access or using any electronic device.

List of Commonly Conflated Financial Terms

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 09:33:02 +0200

According to wikipedia Conflation is the merging of two or more sets of information, texts, ideas, opinions, etc., into one, often in error. This may lead to misunderstandings, as the fusion of distinct subjects might obscure analysis of relationships which are emphasized by contrasts. Why does conflation happen in the first place? There are several possible factors which in some contexts may be co-existing and overlapping:

Nine Things they do not tell you about Risk Management

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 10:24:37 +0200

Some form of Informal Risk Management has been practiced by individuals since time immemorial as it is essential for survival, both at the individual and group level. This is the domain of intuitive decision-making, assessing situations on the spot and taking immediate action to avoid obvious risks. It is also the domain of folk wisdom, traditional knowledge and insights passed down orally through generations, expressed in proverbs, stories, and cultural practices (think e.g., Don’t put all your eggs in one basket or, There is never only one cockroach and the long list of Risk Management One-Liners ). This know-how reflects the collective experiences and beliefs of communities, providing guidance on how to successfully handle adverse scenarios.

Open Risk Mentoring GSOC 2021 Hydra Nextgen API Project

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 23:04:30 +0200

A GSOC 2021 summer project collaboration between Open Risk and the Hydra Ecosystem

Summer is underway and for the Google Summer of Code 2021 season Open Risk is happy to join forces with the Hydra Ecosystem. The project aims to guide students to build a hypermedia enabled REST service around standardized credit portfolio data. More specifically the project will build a REST service as backend for a hypothetical banking entity that collects and disseminates credit portfolio data conforming to an established public standard (the EBA NPL templates, see below).

10, Concentration, diversity in economic networks

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 10: Connecting the Dots: Concentration, diversity, inequality and sparsity in economic networks

In this second Open Risk White Paper on Connecting the Dots we examine measures of concentration, diversity, inequality and sparsity in the context of economic systems represented as network (graph) structures. We adopt a stylized description of economies as property graphs and illustrate how relevant concepts can be represented in this language. We explore in some detail data types representing economic network data and their statistical nature which is critical in their use in concentration analysis. We proceed to recast various known indexes drawn from distinct disciplines in a unified computational context.

Connecting the Dots: Concentration, diversity, inequality and sparsity in economic networks

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 13:49:43 +0200

Concentration, diversity, inequality and sparsity in the context of economic networks

In this second Open Risk White Paper on Connecting the Dots we examine measures of concentration, diversity, inequality and sparsity in the context of economic systems represented as network (graph) structures. We adopt a stylized description of economies as property graphs and illustrate how relevant concepts can represent in this language. We explore in some detail data types representing economic network data and their statistical nature which is critical in their use in concentration analysis. We proceed to recast various known indexes drawn from distinct disciplines in a unified computational context.

9 Ways Graphs Show Up in Data Science

Sat, 05 Jun 2021 12:37:51 +0200

Course Objective

Graphs (and the related concept of Networks) have emerged from a relative mathematical and physics niches to become mainstream models for describing and interpreting various phenomena. The objective of the course is to review various important graph types as they are increasingly explored in data science and sketch their linkages and relationships (a graph of graphs!).

Introduction to the EBA NPL Templates

Mon, 10 May 2021 20:39:34 +0200

Summary

The Open Risk Academy course NPL270672 is a CrashCourse introducing the EBA NPL Templates.

Content

We start with the motivation for the templates and the domain of credit data (to which NPL data belongs). We discuss three core classes that capture the essence of lending operations from a lenders point of view (Counterparty, Loan, Collateral). Next we explore classes that capture events in the lending relationship lifecycle (which we term NPL Scenarios). We look into the main data types: elementary data types, choice lists, arrays and unstructured text. We close with discussing some more complex issues involving graph and timeseries data.

Equinox: a Platform for Sustainable Project Finance Risk Management

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 10:51:58 +0200

Motivation

Equinox is an open source platform that supports holistic risk management and reporting of Sustainable Finance (Sustainable Portfolio Management). The platform integrates geospatial information with applicable regulatory and industry standards from EBA, PCAF and Equator Principles to provide a holistic view of the footprint of both individual projects and portfolios, in particular of project finance investments.

Towards the Semantic Description of Machine Learning Models

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 16:56:36 +0200

Semantic Web Technologies integrate naturally with the worlds of open data science and open source machine learning, empowering better control and management of the risks and opportunities that come with increased digitization and model use

The ongoing and accelerating digitisation of many aspects of social and economic life means the proliferation of data driven/data intermediated decisions and the reliance on quantitative models of various sorts (going under various hashtags such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, data science etc.).

Visual Overview of Built-In Python Data Types

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 12:13:47 +0100

Data Types are a fundamental building block of data science

Data science is about data, but data are not simple and tame beasts. They have character and attitude, which can cause a lot of friction between them and the data scientist. There is a lot of sweat and tears involved when confronting data, but data scientists can do worse than know how to handle in particular Data Type quirks. Namely, a good fraction of data science involves not modelling data, not transforming data, not even cleaning data but simply goading data around the right containers, providing them with the right stage that fits their character. Getting the data type wrong is many a source of both spectacular bugs and hidden, insidious application errors.

Marking Pi Day 2021 With a Raspberry Pi Docker Image for OpenNPL

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 18:49:36 +0100

Celebrating Pi Day 2021

Pi Day is celebrated every year on March 14th. The reason of course is that the day is denoted in some calendars as (3/14), which evokes of 3.14, the first three digits of “π”. A thin excuse maybe but sufficient for the true believers to join along! The occasion represents an annual opportunity for mathematics and science enthusiasts to recite the infinite charms of Pi, including its irrationality, to talk to friends and family about math and its uses, and, when everything else fails, simply eat pie.

An introduction to Semantic Python

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 08:46:09 +0200

This CrashCourse is an introduction to semantic data using Python.

Course Content

It covers the following topics:

We learn to work with RDF graphs using rdflib
We explore the owlready package and OWL ontologies
We look into json-ld serialization of RDF/OWL data
We try data validation using pySHACL
We use throughout a realistic data set based on the Credit Ratings Ontology

Stress Testing of the Future - A view from 2031

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 14:30:51 +0100

What is the future of stress testing?

To speculate on the future of Stress Testing we need first a basic definition what stress testing is. Broadly speaking, the goal of Stress Testing is to assess how a system would behave under adverse conditions that - while not the most likely outcome with the knowledge of today - are within the realm of the plausible.

Visualization of a Planet in Lockdown

Sat, 06 Feb 2021 10:38:14 +0100

Visualizing a year in lockdowns and restricted mobility

As we move into February 2021 the world will be experiencing almost a year under pandemic conditions. This has markedly changed behavioral patterns of human mobility across the board. One major difference with previous pandemics is that through the use of a variety of digital technologies and new data collection channels we know have an unprecedented view of those changing mobility patterns.

Non-Performing Loan Ontology

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 08:50:53 +0000

The Non-Perfoming Loan Ontology

The Non-Performing Loan Ontology is a framework that aims to represent and categorize knowledge about non-performing loans using semantic web information technologies. Codenamed NPLO, it codifies the relationship between the various components of a Non-Performing Loan portfolio dataset.(NB: Non-performing loans are bank loans that are 90 days or more past their repayment date or that are unlikely to be repaid, for example if the borrower is facing financial difficulties).

What do people talk about at FOSDEM 2021

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 10:10:14 +0100

Introduction

What is FOSDEM?

FOSDEM is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized event centered on free and open-source software development (with a geographic focus on the European open source ecosystems / projects). FOSDEM is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and open-source software movement. It aims to enable developers to meet and to promote the awareness and use of free and open-source software.

Taxonomy of Uncertainty

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 12:10:14 +0100

Risk, Randomness, Uncertainty and other Ambiguous Terms

Uncertainty versus Risk is a popular discussion topic among risk managers, especially after major risk management disasters. The debate can get really hairy and drift into deep philosophical areas about the nature of knowledge etc. Yet the significance of having an as clear as possible language toolkit around these terms should not be underestimated. Practical risk management typically shuns too deep excursions into the meaning of things, yet that is not quite compatible with the use of sophisticated methods and tools (such as a Risk Model ) that assumes an understanding of the scope and limitations of “knowledge”.

A Global Mobility Index

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 12:18:37 +0100

Constructing a Global Mobility Index (GMI)

In previous posts (here, and here) we introduced new Open Risk Dashboard functionalities that integrate COVID-19 community mobility data (currently focusing on the datasets provided by Google).

As a reminder, these reports chart over time human mobility trends collected from mobile geolocation data. The granularity is by geography and across different categories of places / activities such as retail and recreation areas, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential areas. Through these data sets we have available (for the first time in history) an overall quantitative view of global mobility (and Mobility Risk )!

Is Global Debt Truly Astronomical?

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 13:49:08 +0100

Is the size of global debt truly “astronomical”?

The notion of astronomical numbers and figures is quite frequently seeping in everyday language when large quantities of something are encountered in “normal” life. The strict definition of astronomical is obviously something of, or relating to, astronomy and astronomical observations but in common usage it also denotes something enormously or inconceivably large. This is, of course, because astronomical figures are inconceivably large!

Risk Function Ontology

Thu, 26 Nov 2020 08:50:53 +0000

The Risk Function Ontology

The Risk Function Ontology is a framework that aims to represent and categorize knowledge about risk management functions using semantic web information technologies. Codenamed RFO codifies the relationship between the various components of a risk management organization. Individuals, teams or even whole departments tasked with risk management exist in some shape or form in most organizations. The ontology allows the definition of risk management roles in more precise terms, which in turn can be used in a variety of contexts: towards better structured actual job descriptions, more accurate description of internal processes and easier inspection of alignement and consistency with risk taxonomies. See also live version and the white paper OpenRiskWP04_061415.

Monte Carlo Simulation of the US Electoral College

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 12:29:56 +0100

The role of simulation in risk management and decision support

A Simulation is a simplified imitation of a process or system that represents with some fidelity its operation over time. In the context of risk management and decision support simulation can be a very powerful tool as it allows us to assess potential outcomes in a systematic way and explore what-if questions in ways that might otherwise be not feasible. Simulation is used when the underlying model is too complex to yield explicit analytic models (An analytic model is one can be “solved” exactly or with standard numerical methods, for example resulting in a formula).

Federated Credit Systems, Part One: Unbundling the Credit Provision Business Model

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 20:22:49 +0100

Federated Credit Systems, Part I: Unbundling the Credit Provision Business Model

As an architectural design and information technology approach, federation has received increased attention in domains such as the medical sector (under the name federated analysis), in official statistics (under the name trusted data) and in mass computing devices (smartphones), under the name federated learning.

09, Federated Credit Systems, Unbundling Credit Provision

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 9: Federated Credit Systems, Part I: Unbundling The Credit Provision Business Model

In this (the first of series of three) white paper, we introduce and explore the concept of federated credit systems. We review the rapidly developing fields of Federated Analysis and Federated Learning as already actively studied in the domains of medicine and consumer computing devices. This forms the backdrop for understanding the potential and challenges of applying similar concepts in finance and more particular credit provision. The context of modern banking is substantially different from the above-mentioned use cases. Understanding and shaping federated information systems to cater to its unique features and constraints (key added value, competitive landscape, regulatory frameworks) will help accelerate the adoption of new designs. Towards that purpose we construct a framework that conceptually unbundles the complex operation that is modern credit provision. We introduce a number of fundamental business entities (subunits) and their associated functions and discuss the underlying business models. We discuss, in particular, how and why they exchange data and metrics and the key risk management challenges of each. Finally, we sketch current architectures for credit information sharing with an overture to the new possibilities opening up with federation architectures.

Logarithmic Sankey Visualization of Credit Migrations

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 13:26:22 +0200

Using Sankey Diagrams

Sankey Diagrams are a type of flow diagram composed of interconnected arrows. The width of the arrows is proportional to the flow rate. Sankey diagrams are often used in physical sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) and engineering but also in economics. They can be used to represent the relative role and significance of various inputs and outputs in a given process.

openNPL 0.2 REST API implementation

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 20:29:48 +0200

openNPL 0.2 release

The open source openNPL platform supports the management of standardized credit portfolio data for non-performing loans. In this respect it implements the detailed European Banking Authority NPL loan templates. openNPL aims to be at the same time easy to integrate in human workflows (using a familiar web interface) and integrate into automated (computer driven) workflows.

Back to School With the Open Risk Academy

Mon, 31 Aug 2020 15:30:40 +0200

Risk Management will not be the same going forward: too much is at stake

The summer is over in the Northern Hemisphere - and what an unusual summer has it been! Worldwide the implications and challenges of adjusting to a Covid-19 pandemic are still a major issue, affecting individuals, companies and governments.

Academy Mobile and Desktop Apps

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 16:32:15 +0200

About the Academy

The Open Risk Academy is an eLearning platform offering innovative training on diverse Risk Management topics.

Overview Access Options

The primary way to access the Academy and the one that exposes its full functionality is via the Academy Web Server. This mode requires internet access and is best experienced via a desktop / laptop computer with a modern browser (Firefox, Chrome etc).
Once a user has an Academy account they can also access learning system via a Mobile App (Android or iOS). The functionality offered by this mode is currently rather limited, but it has the advantage of portability (and some off-line abilities)
Similar to the Mobile App, users can install a Desktop App (for Linux, Mac or Windows). Its functionality is identical to the mobile app.

Installation of the Mobile App

Go to your favorite app store and search and install the Moodle Android App or Moodle iOS App
Once the app is installed connect to the Academy by selecting Sites and entering the Academy web address: https://www.openriskacademy.com, followed by your account credentials
Done!

openNPL now Available in Dockerized Form

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 19:29:32 +0200

openNPL now Available in Dockerized Form

Following up on the first release of openNPL the platform is now available to install using Docker. Running openNPL via docker is the installation option that simplifies the manual process (but a working docker installation is required!).

Docker Hub

You can pull the latest openNPL image from Docker Hub ( This method is recommended if you do not want to mess with the source distribution).

FuriousBanker Documentation

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 16:32:15 +0200

FuriousBanker is an educational game series (in the serious game genre) developed by Open Risk to enable modern interactive eLearning for people working or studying to work in financial risk management. The game concepts and logic are directly derived from realistic situations and tools used in practice (but may have been simplified and/or dramatized).

21 Ways to Visualize a Timeseries

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 15:37:51 +0200

Course Objective

This course is a deep-dive into the structure of visualizations, in particular visualizations of timeseries data. The course is now live at the Academy.

openNPL: Open Source NPL Platform - First Release

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 10:33:29 +0200

Non-Performing Loans

The covid-19 crisis will certainly impact the concentration of Non-Performing Loans but given the special nature of this economic crisis compared (in particular) with the 2008 financial crisis it is unclear how precisely things will evolve.

In a previous post and white paper (OpenRiskWP07_022616) we discussed the importance of advancing open and transparent methodologies for managing the risks associated with such credit portfolios. Effective management of NPL is also a top regulatory priority. Following calls from the EU Commission and the EU Council to develop data templates to reduce information asymmetries between potential buyers and sellers of NPL, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has developed such standardised data templates.

Risk Compensation: From Face Masks to Credit, Market and Systemic Risk

Fri, 29 May 2020 11:39:10 +0200

What is Risk Compensation?

Risk Compensation is a behavioral model of human attitudes towards risk which suggests that people might adjust their behavior in response to the perceived level of risk. It follows that, depending on the strength of the effect, that it might counteract and even annul the impact of risk mitigation, if the updated attitude and behavior modifies the actual underlying risk

Comparing Google Community Mobility Reports Across Countries

Tue, 19 May 2020 20:02:53 +0200

The community mobility reports and OpenCPM

In a previous post we introduced new OpenCPM functionality that integrates COVID-19 community mobility data (currently from Google). The reports chart movement trends over time by geography, across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential.

Exploring Community Mobility Reports Using OpenCPM

Thu, 07 May 2020 12:48:20 +0200

The community mobility reports and OpenCPM

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded technology providers (most notably Google and Apple) made available to the public aggregated and anonymized data about human mobility in the crisis period (on the basis of smartphone location data). These Community Mobility Reports provide insights into how mobility patterns changed in response both to pandemic news and policies aimed at combating COVID-19.

New Open Risk Academy Course: Introduction to GeoJSON

Thu, 07 May 2020 11:39:27 +0200

Course Content

This course is a CrashProgram (short course) introducing the GeoJSON specification for the encoding of geospatial features. The course is at an introductory technical level. It requires some familiarity with data specifications such as JSON and a very basic knowledge of Python

The Game of Life With Macroeconomic Stimulus

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 13:46:52 +0200

Agent-Based Models

The origins and early years

According to Wikipedia an agent-based model (ABM) is

ABM: class of computational models for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous agents (both individual or collective entities such as organizations or groups) with a view to assessing their effects on the system as a whole.

New Open Risk Academy Course: Simulation of Credit Contagion

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 18:46:09 +0200

Course Content

This course is an introduction to the concept of credit contagion. It covers the following topics:

Contagion Risk Overview and Definition
Various Contagion Types and Modelling Challenges
The Simple Contagion Model by Davis and Lo
Supply Chains Contagion
Sovereign Contagion

Connecting the Dots: Economic Networks as Property Graphs

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 13:49:43 +0200

Connecting the Dots: Economic Networks as Property Graphs

We develop a quantitative framework that approaches economic networks from the point of view of contractual relationships between agents (and the interdependencies those generate). The representation of agent properties, transactions and contracts is done in the context of a property graph.

A typical use case for the proposed framework is the study of credit networks.

Why is Risk so poorly defined?

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 12:36:56 +0000

A survey of existing definitions of risk

When looking up the meaning of Risk we are confronted with a surprising situation. There is no satisfying and authoritative general purpose one-line definition that we can adopt without second thoughts. Let us start with the standard dictionary definitions:

What do people talk about at FOSDEM 2020

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 11:54:12 +0000

What do people talk about at FOSDEM 2020

Introduction

FOSDEM is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centered on free and open-source software development. It is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and open-source software movement. It aims to enable developers to meet and to promote the awareness and use of free and open-source software. FOSDEM is held annually since 2001, usually during the first weekend of February, at the Université Libre de Bruxelles Solbosch campus in the southeast of Brussels, Belgium. The history of FOSDEM is neatly available at Wikipedia, while the current conference (2020) website is available here.

Making Open Risk Data easier

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 13:33:01 +0000

Making Open Risk Data easier

In an earlier blog post we discussed the promise of Open Risk Data and how the widespread availability of good information that is relevant for risk management can substantially help mitigate diverse risks.

The list of Open Risk Data providers, particularly from public sector, keeps increasing and we are aiming to document all available datasets in the dedicated page of the Open Risk Manual.

08, Economic Networks as Property Graphs

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 8: Connecting the Dots, Economic Networks as Property Graphs

NACE Classification and the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 20:37:10 +0000

The integration of climate risk and broader sustainability constraints into risk management is a monumental task and many tools are still lacking. Yet there is strong support and bold initiatives from policy bodies and an increasing focus from the private sector side.

Risk Model Ontology

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 08:50:53 +0000

Semantic Web Technologies

The Risk Model Ontology is a framework that aims to represent and categorize knowledge about risk models using semantic web information technologies.

In principle any semantic technology can be the starting point for a risk model ontology. The Open Risk Manual adopts the W3C’s Web Ontology Language (OWL). OWL is a Semantic Web language designed to represent rich and complex knowledge about things, groups of things, and relations between things. OWL is a computational logic-based language such that knowledge expressed in OWL can be exploited by computer programs, e.g., to verify the consistency of that knowledge or to make implicit knowledge explicit. OWL documents, known as ontologies, can be published in the World Wide Web and may refer to or be referred from other OWL ontologies. OWL is part of the W3C’s Semantic Web technology stack, which includes RDF, RDFS, SPARQL, etc

Federated Credit Risk Models

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 13:46:42 +0000

The motivation for federated credit risk models

Federated learning is a machine learning technique that is receiving increased attention in diverse data driven application domains that have data privacy concerns. The essence of the concept is to train algorithms across decentralized servers, each holding their own local data samples, hence without the need to exchange potentially sensitive information. The construction of a common model is achieved through the exchange of derived data (gradients, parameters, weights etc). This design stands in contrast to traditional model estimation where all data reside (or are brought into one computational environment).

A new logo for the Open Risk Manual

Fri, 08 Nov 2019 09:11:43 +0000

A new logo for the Open Risk Manual

We have updated the logo for the Open Risk Manual.

The new logo aims to make more explicit both the inspiration that the Open Risk Manual project draws from the trail-blazing Wikipedia initiative (and increasing collection of associated Wikimedia projects) and the reliance on the open source ecosystem of software and tools, including the mediawiki software and the important semantic mediawiki extension.

An overview of EU Financial Regulation initiatives

Sun, 27 Oct 2019 10:59:12 +0000

An overview of EU Financial Regulation initiatives

In the European Union there are several ongoing large scale legislative and regulatory projects that transform the context within which individual, firms and the public sector interact economically. While financial and regulatory reform is an ongoing process in all jurisdictions globally, the size and supra-national nature of the European Union makes those projects particularly interesting.

Overview of the Julia-Python-R Universe

Wed, 16 Oct 2019 10:38:43 +0000

Overview of the Julia-Python-R Universe

A new Open Risk Manual entry offers a side-by-side review of the main open source ecosystems supporting the Data Science domain: Julia, Python, R, sometimes abbreviated as Jupyter.

Motivation

A large component of Quantitative Risk Management relies on data processing and quantitative tools ( aka Data Science ). In recent years open source software targeting Data Science finds increased adoption in diverse applications. The overview of the Julia-Python-R Universe article is a side by side comparison of a wide range of aspects of Python, Julia and R language ecosystems.

Manual

Sat, 28 Sep 2019 20:28:36 +0000

Complementary to the Open Risk Academy is the Open Risk Manual. A publicly accessible repository of information (wiki) for risk management developed and maintained by Open Risk and contributors and released under a Creative Commons license. Complementary to the Open Risk Manual is the Open Risk Data database, a structured knowledge base dedicated to Risk Data.

Data Quality and Exploratory Data Analysis using Python

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 13:15:36 +0000

Data Quality and Exploratory Data Analysis using Python

In two new Open Risk Academy courses we figure step by step how to use python to work to review risk data from a data quality perspective and how to perform exploratory data analysis with pandas, seaborn and statsmodels:

What constitutes a good risk taxonomy?

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 17:27:09 +0000

What is a Risk Taxonomy?

There are various formal definitions of risk taxonomies (and we will go over those below), but it might be useful to first look at a very intuitive example of a risk taxonomy: the classification of fire hazards (also known as fire classes)

The limits and risks of risk limits

Tue, 28 May 2019 13:38:33 +0000

Limit frameworks are fundamental tools for risk management

A Limit Framework is a set of policies used by financial institutions (or other firms that actively assume quantifiable risks) to govern in a quantitative manner the maximum risk exposure permitted for an individual, trading desk, business line etc.

Open Source Securitisation

Wed, 10 Apr 2019 15:50:32 +0000

Open Source Securitisation

Motivation

After the Great Financial Crisis securitisation has become the poster child of a financial product exhibiting complexity and opaqueness. The issues and lessons learned post-crisis were many, involving all aspects of the securitisation process, from the nature and quality of the underlying assets, the incentives of the various agents involved and the ability of investors to analyze the products they invested in. While the most egregious complications involved various types of re-securitisation and/or the interplay of structured credit derivatives undoubtedly even vanilla securitisation structure has a considerable amount of business logic.

Visualization of large scale economic data sets

Sat, 23 Mar 2019 11:09:20 +0000

Visualization of large scale economic data sets

Economic data are increasingly being aggregated and disseminated by Statistics Agencies and Central Banks using modern API’s (application programming interfaces) which enable unprecedented accessibility to wider audiences. In turn the availability of relevant information enables more informed decision-making by a variety of actors in both public and private sectors. An excellent example of such a modern facility is the European Central Bank’s Statistical Data Warehouse (SDW), an online economic data repository that provides features to access, find, compare, download and share the ECB’s published statistical information.

Python versus R Language: A side by side comparison for quantitative risk modeling

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 13:10:38 +0000

Motivation for the comparison

A large component of risk management relies on data processing and quantitative tools. In turn, such information processing pipelines and numerical algorithms must be implemented in computer systems.

ESMA Securitisation Templates are now documented at the Open Risk Manual

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 09:31:35 +0000

ESMA Securitisation Templates are now documented at the Open Risk Manual

The ESMA Securitisation Templates are now fully documented at the Open Risk Manual. Users can browse, search and cross-reference with the rest of the knowledge base.

Machine learning approaches to synthetic credit data

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 14:30:56 +0000

The challenge with historical credit data

Historical credit data are vital for a host of credit portfolio management activities: Starting with assessment of the performance of different types of credits and all the way to the construction of sophisticated credit risk models. Such is the importance of data inputs that for risk models impacting significant decision-making / external reporting there are even prescribed minimum requirements for the type and quality of necessary historical credit data.

Stressing Transition Matrices

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 15:54:40 +0000

Release of version 0.4.1 of the transitionMatrix package focuses on stressing transition matrices

Further building the open source OpenCPM toolkit this release of transitionMatrix features:

Feature: Added functionality for conditioning multi-period transition matrices
Training: Example calculation and visualization of conditional matrices
Datasets: State space description and CGS mappings for top-6 credit rating agencies

Release 0.4 of transitionMatrix adds Aalen-Johansen estimators

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 10:03:03 +0000

Release of version 0.4 of the transitionMatrix package

Further building the open source OpenCPM toolkit this release of transitionMatrix features:

Feature: Added Aalen-Johansen Duration Estimator
Documentation: Major overhaul of documentation, now targeting ReadTheDocs distribution
Training: Streamlining of all examples
Installation: Pypi and wheel installation options
Datasets: Synthetic Datasets in long format

Enjoy!

Comparing IFRS 9 and CECL provision volatility

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 10:46:50 +0000

Is the IFRS 9 or CECL standard more volatile? Its all relative

Objective

In this study we compare the volatility of reported profit-and-loss (PnL) for credit portfolios when those are measured (accounted for) following respectively the IFRS 9 and CECL accounting standards.

The objective is to assess the impact of a key methodological difference between the two standards, the so-called Staging approach of IFRS 9. There are further explicit differences in the two standards. Importantly, given the standards are not prescriptive, it is very likely that there will be material differences in interpretation and implementation of the principles (for example on the nature and construction of scenarios). In this study we perform a controlled comparison adopting a ‘ceteris-paribus’ mentality: We assume that all other implementation details are similar and we focus on the impact of the Staging approach.

OpenNPL Documentation

Tue, 18 Sep 2018 15:47:20 +0000

The openNPL architecture is a cloud based framework that supports credit portfolio management activity using an entirely modern approach.

Version 0.4 of the Concentration Library adds geographic / industrial concentration functionality

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 22:39:00 +0000

Release of version 0.4 of the Concentration Library adds Geographic / Industrial concentration indexes

Further building out the OpenCPM set of tools, we release version 0.4 of the Concentration Library, a python library for the computation of various concentration, diversification and inequality indices.

NACE Economic Activity Pictograms

Sat, 11 Aug 2018 16:28:39 +0000

Representing economic activity using pictograms

Visualization can produce significant new insights when applied to quantitative data. It is currently undergoing a renaissance that mirrors other developments in computing and data science. Sophisticated open source libraries such as d3.js or matplotlib, to name but a couple, are enabling an ever wider range of users to distill valuable information from the avalanche of data being produced.

Credit Portfolio PnL volatility under IFRS 9 and CECL

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 21:58:47 +0000

Credit Portfolio PnL volatility under IFRS 9 and CECL

Objective

We explore conceptually a selection of key structural drivers of profit-and-loss (PnL) volatility for credit portfolios when profitability is measured following the principles underpinning the new IFRS 9 / CECL standards

Methodology

We setup stylized calculations for a credit portfolio with the following main parameters and assumptions:

Version 0.2 of the Open Risk API incorporates the standardized EBA portfolio data templates

Mon, 28 May 2018 10:55:58 +0000

Extending the Open Risk API to include the EBA Portfolio Data Templates

The Open Risk API provides a mechanism to integrate arbitrary collections of risk data and risk modelling resources in the context of assessing and managing financial risk. It is based on two key technologies of the modern Web, RESTful architectures and Semantic Data.

Credit Portfolio Management in the IFRS 9 / CECL and Stress Testing Era

Tue, 22 May 2018 14:12:36 +0000

Credit Portfolio Management in the IFRS 9 / CECL and Stress Testing Era

The post-crisis world presents portfolio managers with the significant challenge to assimilate in day-to-day management the variety of conceptual frameworks now simultaneously applicable in the assessment of portfolio credit risk:

The first major strand is the widespread application of regulatory stress testing methodologies in the estimation of regulatory risk capital requirements
The second major strand is the introduction of new accounting standards (IFRS 9 / CECL) for the measurement and disclosure of expected credit losses While both Regulatory Stress Testing and IFRS 9 / CECL accounting require investment in analytic capabilities and provide unique new insights, both are aimed at satisfying evolving prudential or investor disclosure requirements. Neither is designed to help credit portfolio managers analyse and steer their portfolios in the bottom-up fashion that is an essential part their mandate.

The above developments are overlaid into pre-existing conceptual and practical frameworks such as

IFRS 9 Expected Credit Loss and Risk Capital

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 21:38:59 +0000

The new IFRS 9 financial reporting standard

IFRS 9 (and the closely related CECL) is a brand new financial reporting standard developed and approved by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

Strictly speaking IFRS 9 concerns only the accounting and reporting of financial instruments (e.g. bank loans and similar credit products). Yet the introduction of the IFRS 9 standard has significant repercussions beyond financial reporting, and touches e.g., bank risk management as well. This is prompted by the fact that the framework requires embedding forward looking risk assessments in the measurement of the value of credit assets currently on the balance sheet.

A Risk Agnostic Approach to European Safe Bonds (ESBies) Tranching

Fri, 09 Feb 2018 16:33:37 +0000

What are European Safe Bonds?

While the creation of the eurozone was a landmark of the European integration process, the financial crisis highlighted that the eurozone remains an incomplete design which can lead to unpredictable and adverse situations in the event of a (the) next major crisis. One of the key such incompleteness features of the current eurozone architecture is that it does not have a truly risk-free (safe) euro debt instrument: one that continues being serviced (avoids a default event) at virtually any point in time and state of the world, no matter how severe.

Release of version 0.3 of the Concentration Library

Wed, 27 Dec 2017 13:23:09 +0000

Release of version 0.3 of the ConcentrationMetrics Library

Further building out the OpenCPM set of tools, we release version 0.3 of the ConcentrationMetrics Library. This python library for the computation of various concentration, diversification and inequality indices.

The below list provides documentation URL’s for each one of the implemented indexes

OpenNPL Database

Sat, 23 Dec 2017 11:13:35 +0000

Motivation for Building an open source database based on EBA’s Standardized NPL Templates

In an insightful recent piece, “Overcoming non-performing loan market failures with transaction platforms”, Fell et al. dug deeply into the market failures that help perpetuate the Non-performing loan (NPL) problem. They highlight, in particular, information asymmetries and the attendant costs of valuing NPL portfolios as key obstacles. In the same wavelength, the European Banking Authority published standardized NPL data templates as a step towards reducing the obstacles that prevent the reduction of NPL’s.

Data Scientists Have No Future

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 15:55:06 +0000

Data Scientists Have No Future

The working definition of a Data Scientist seems to be in the current overheated environment:

doing whatever it takes to get the job done in a digital #tech domain that we have long neglected but which is now coming back to haunt us!

Four individuals that can look straight into your eyes

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 15:52:56 +0000

Four individuals that can look straight into your eyes

Here are four individuals that can look straight into your eyes

Torvalds developed the #linux operating system, the software engine now powering anything from the tiniest #raspberrypi to the scariest supercomputer. Humanity’s best guarantee that the digital era remains an equal playing field
Mullenweg developed the #wordpress blogging platform. Gave voice and content ownership to millions of digital authors making him the closest to the Gutenberg of our era
Dougiamas developed #moodle, the world’s digital Academy. Capturing millenia of teacher’s experience into one powerful #elearning system makes him an educational innovator on a par with the Greek masters of antiquity
Wales developed #wikipedia. It is not only the world’s digital encyclopedia and top 5 website. It is the most blinding evidence that tech enabled mass collaboration will change the human condition

They are all different characters from different walks of life. Yet they are united by the power of the #opensource software movement.

Machine Learning Ballyhoo

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 15:44:16 +0000

Machine Learning Ballyhoo

Are you getting a bit tired with all the machine learning ballyhoo?

You can blame it all on a German mathematician(*), Carl Friedrich Gauss, who started the futuristic mega-trend back in 1809: He showed us how to train a straight line to pass nicely through a cloud of unruly, scattered data points. To find, in effect, a path of least embarrassment.

If programming languages were human languages which one would be which?

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 15:36:09 +0000

If programming languages were human languages which one would be which?

Most developers know (or get to know quickly once they join a team) that programming languages are as much about communicating with other developers as they are about instructing the computer. Which raises the interesting question: If programming languages were human languages which one would be which? Here is a (tongue-in-cheek mind you!) compilation of a mapping between programming languages and human languages. Suggestions / corrections are welcome via the feedback button

Transition Matrix Library First Release

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 20:21:14 +0000

Transition Matrix Library First Release

Open Risk released version 0.1 of the Transition Matrix Library

Motivation

State transition phenomena where a system exhibits stochastic (random) migration between well-defined discrete states ( see picture below for an illustration) are very common in a variety of fields. Depending on the precise specification and modelling assumptions they may go under the name of multi-state models, Markov chain models or state-space models.

The Zen of IFRS 9 Modeling

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 10:06:00 +0000

The Zen of IFRS 9 Modeling

At Open Risk we are firm believers in balancing art and science when developing quantitative risk tools. The introduction of the IFRS 9 and CECL accounting frameworks for reporting credit sensitive financial instruments is a massive new worldwide initiative that relies in no small part on quantitative models. The scope and depth of the program in comparison with previous similar efforts (e.g. Basel II) suggests that much can go wrong and it will take considerable time, iterations, communication and training to develop a mature toolkit that is fit-for-purpose.

Loan Level Templates Using Python

Tue, 04 Apr 2017 22:04:12 +0000

Loan Level Templates Using Python

In this Open Risk Academy course we figure step by step how to use python to work with Loan Level Templates, using the ECB SME template as an example.

Overview of the loan level template
Manipulating spreadsheets with Python
The Python Dictionary
Organization of Portfolio Data
Generating Test Portfolios

Get an Open Risk Academy account and get started with the course here

Guiding principles for a viable open source operational risk model

Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:45:39 +0000

What are the guiding principles for a viable open source operational risk model (OSORM)? Such a framework should:

Privacy-at-Risk

Sat, 25 Feb 2017 11:46:50 +0000

The Data Privacy genie is out of the bottle

From Yahoo’s massive email data leaks, to Equifax’s exposing of sensitive data for a large segment of the US population, to Apple’s resisting the bypassing the security features of the iPhone, not a week goes by without some alarming piece of news around data privacy.

How to Stress Test Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 09:27:50 +0000

How to Stress Test Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction

In recent decades we have been collectively spared the haunting images and existential anxiety provoked by the sight of detonating nuclear weapons for testing purposes - not to mention the increased levels of radiation in the atmosphere and other side-effects. This achievement is largely thanks to a series of treaties to control nuclear bomb testing that have been signed and enforced by most (unhappily not all) countries worldwide.

The Promise of Open Risk Data

Tue, 21 Feb 2017 08:49:38 +0000

The Promise of Open Risk Data

There is a legend that every time a data set is released into the open, somewhere dies a black swan

Well, it is not a true legend. Legends take centuries of oral storytelling to form. In our frantic age, dominated by the daily news cycle and viral twitter storms, legends have been replaced by the rather more short-lived memes and #hashtags.

Seeking clues for financial stability in quantum physics

Mon, 20 Feb 2017 13:07:49 +0000

Seeking clues for financial stability from quantum physics

How physicists discovered why the world is stable

Physics is one of those remarkably successful branches of science that have helped shape the modern era. Let your gaze drop on any man made gadget in your surroundings and its likely that its working principles go back to a fundamental discovery in physical science that dates back no more than two hundred years or so.

If banks were airlines

Sat, 18 Feb 2017 14:50:34 +0000

If banks were airlines

Ever since the scary turbulence of the Great Financial Crisis it has been instructive and illuminating to compare the travails of the financial industry with the state of other industries, especially those more down to earth, also known as real world industries.

Lehman, Brexit, De-Regulation and the future of EU fintech

Fri, 17 Feb 2017 11:33:35 +0000

Lehman, Brexit, De-Regulation and the future of EU fintech

The decision by the citizens of the United Kingdom to vote against continuing membership of the European Union (#brexit) will have wide ranging repercussions on many facets of the European (and even global) economic system. As of early 2017, we see this trend further reinforced by a new US administration that aims to revisit a wide range of policy choices, including aspects of financial services regulation. While the aftershocks of these events still reverberate, it seems that we can posit quite confidently that:

Transparency, Standards, Collaboration and regaining trust in financial services

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 09:41:04 +0000

Transparency, collaboration key to regaining trust in financial services

In banking, confidence is the first order of business

Maintaining the confidence of market participants, clients, shareholders, regulators and governments is uniquely important for the financial sector. Trust is, quite literally, the real currency. Yet it is a truism that confidence is hard to build up and rather easy to destroy. Why is this so?

We are hiring artificially intelligent bankers

Wed, 15 Feb 2017 15:59:13 +0000

Job Specification for an Artificially Intelligent Banker

The Artificially Intelligent Banker is responsible for the overall management of the AI2H (AI to Human) lending department. The following requirements (job specifications) were determined by extensive data mining analysis and derived from the job description as crucial for success in the Artificially Intelligent Banker role.

Eternal Risk Management One-Liners

Tue, 14 Feb 2017 08:30:45 +0000

A single line is sometimes the only thing that separates you from disaster!

Do you know of any good one-liners that saved the day at one point?

(Update May 2017) We moved the list to the Open Risk Manual for easier editing and contributions

Can accounting ever be sexy? From IFRS 9 to Sustainability

Sun, 12 Feb 2017 10:39:35 +0000

Accounting probably would not count among the more glamorous of professions. The reasons for that status and whether it is justified are beyond the scope of this brief commentary.

What is interesting to note, though, is that the relative attractiveness of accounting is arguably improving, driven by a number of systemic societal developments:

Fintech, embrace your inner regulator!

Fri, 10 Feb 2017 17:49:13 +0000

Fintech, embrace your inner regulator

2017 is shaping to be the year of #regtech, aka new technology startups setting up digital shop to help the financial services sector cope with its heavy regulatory burden. But what is regulation? Why is it a burden and how does it relate to real risks and risk management?

How much digital bank can we fit in a 50 euro bill?

Tue, 06 Dec 2016 12:29:14 +0000

How much digital bank can we fit in a 50 euro bill?

Much has been said about the impact of Big Data and high-end GPU Computing on the provision of digital financial services. At Open Risk we wanted to explore the boundary of what is possible at the diametrically opposite end of the cost spectrum:

What is the_absolutely minimum_cost for providing digital financial services? . In this post we begin the journey of finding out the answer to that question and it promises to be fascinating!

Fintech Risk Events

Wed, 03 Aug 2016 09:17:22 +0000

Fintech Risk Events

Fintech Risk Events is an open catalog of observed and publicized operational failures of fintech business models. The catalog aims to document, in due course, such events reasonably accurately, to allow risk managers understand the ( potentially new) vulnerabilities of new financial services models.

Scope

The scope of the operational risk database is Fintech companies. By that we mean newly established financial services providers that operate exclusively via new (digital) platforms and are (mostly) unregulated. The fintech sector is distinct from established financial services firms that operate with a mix of technology platforms and are (mostly) regulated.

The Atlas was discovered recently in archaeological work studying pre-crisis civilizations. Despite the obvious wear and tear, all key risk failure areas have been preserved. We note the remarkable diversity of organizational forms and economic structures. Most interestingly, there is even an uncharted territory that was rumored to be inhabited by black swans.

Reducing variation in credit risk-weighted assets

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 17:14:53 +0000

Reducing variation in credit risk-weighted assets - The benign and vicious cycles of internal risk models

March 2016 wasn’t a good month for so-called internal risk models, the quantitative tools constructed by banks for determining such vital numbers as how much buffer capital is needed to protect the savings of their clients.

AMA Risk Model

Mon, 14 Mar 2016 14:41:13 +0000

ΝΒ: This is not a post about real whales and the ongoing struggle to keep these magnificent mammals alive for future generations to marvel at. Hopefully the individuals who have risked their lives to bring the near extinction of many whale species to worldwide attention will not take offense with us usurping imagery linked to this valiant campaign. We simply want to draw attention to another, rather more armchair type of campaign, namely: saving the_AMA risk model. A bit more esoteric as a cause, but ultimately a good cause nevertheless_

Risk Capital for Non-Performing Loans

Sat, 27 Feb 2016 10:48:06 +0000

Currently many countries are drowning in bad credits

This visualization from the World Bank shows the current distribution of non-performing loans (NPL’s in short) around the world, as fraction of the total outstanding loans:

Google Summer of Code Ideas List Page

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:14:37 +0000

Google Summer of Code Ideas List Page

Over the course of the years we have seen many an open source project that we love and use daily participate as mentoring organizations in Google’s great communal activity. This year Open Risk applied to join the effort to promote open source, in particular as it applies in the less visited area of financial risk management.

Risk Management Internship on the Cusp of a New Financial Era

Sun, 14 Feb 2016 12:44:00 +0000

In finance, it’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times

It is a special moment to start a career in financial services. We are walking amid the ruins of the previous financial order. Fallen banks, broken markets, negative interest rates, shell-shocked economies and discredited theoretical assumptions. We see the enormous cost and impact to the welfare of society of a less than perfect financial system which has not kept pace with the advancement of our general knowledge and technical capabilities in most other domains.

Risk Management Ontology Documentation

Thu, 04 Feb 2016 15:51:04 +0000

Open Risk is supporting the development of semantic web technologies to support risk management efforts. This page organizes the currently developed and published tools.

Open Risk Sitemap

Thu, 04 Feb 2016 15:08:32 +0000

Open Risk Sitemap

A summary of links to various Open Risk resources grouped by type

General

Open Risk Academy

Open Risk Manual

Open Source Risk Models and Tools

FAQ and Feedback

Cumulative List of White Papers and Presentations

Top 10 Reasons why Silicon Valley cannot disrupt Wall Street (yet)

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 10:49:36 +0000

The Top Ten list of why Silicon Valley cannot disrupt Wall Street (yet) was published first here in October 2014 and has been occasionally updated since

From Big Data, to Linked Data and Linked Models

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 09:47:37 +0000

From Big Data, to Linked Data and Linked Models

The big data problem:

As certainly as the sun will set today, the big data explosion will lead to a big clean-up mess.

How do we know? It is simply a case of history repeating. We only have to study the still smouldering last chapter of banking industry history. Currently banks are portrayed as something akin to the village idiot as far as technology adoption is concerned (and there is certainly a nugget of truth to this). Yet it is also true that banks, in many jurisdictions and across trading styles and business lines, have adopted data driven models already a long time ago. In fact, long enough ago that we have already observed how it call all ended pear shaped, Great Financial Crisis and all.

07, Risk Capital for Non-Performing Loans

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 7: Risk Capital for Non-Performing Loans

We develop a conceptual framework for risk capital calculation for portfolios of non-performing loans. In general banking practice, loans that pass a threshold of delinquency are declared non-performing and are provisioned. Yet there is a residual risk that the provisioning is not sufficient. This risk must be covered by capital buffers. The literature for risk capital requirements for NPL portfolios is very limited, which implies that Stress Testing and Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment (ICAAP) requirements for non-performing loans are harder to meet. Our framework builds on tools used in portfolio credit risk modeling and provides a structured approach to address the risk profile that is specific to non-performing loans.

FX Lending Risk

Fri, 22 Jan 2016 18:57:07 +0000

A stress testing methodology for analyzing FX lending risk. The methodology extends standard credit risk modelling tools to capture the increased risks of FX lending in a consistent way

06, Stress Testing Methodology for FX Lending

Sat, 16 Jan 2016 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 6: Stress Testing Methodology for FX Lending

We develop a simple methodology for stress testing portfolios of credit instruments classified as foreign exchange lending. Loans whose repayment schedule is denominated in a currency other than that of the borrower’s domestic currency are commonly seen in many jurisdictions and have a risk profile that is considerably more complicated than domestic currency loans. Yet the literature for credit risk assessment and stress testing of portfolios of such loans is very limited, which means that Stress Testing and Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment (ICAAP) requirements are harder to meet. Our methodology builds on existing standard tools used in portfolio credit risk modeling and enables obtaining insights into the additional risk factors embedded in foreign currency lending.

Risk Forum now operational again! (Update)

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 12:09:20 +0000

One of the many good suggestions during early beta testing of the Open Risk website was to create a forum for risk management professionals to exchange news, ideas, opinions and general banter about their trade.

This led to the building and rolling out of the Risk Forum, which is now live and ready. Access to the Risk Forum for posting requires Open Risk registration.

Business Model Risk

Wed, 13 Jan 2016 10:40:35 +0000

Business Model Risk - The Forgotten Risk Type

Sustainable business models that demonstrate adequate profitability over long horizons are key to a healthy market economy. This applies to firms and organizations of any size and in any sector. But how do we determine what is sustainable and how can we tell a risky business structure from a stable one?

05, Identification of Business Model Risks

Sat, 09 Jan 2016 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 5: Identification Framework for Business Model Risks

We develop an analytical framework for the systematic identification of business model risks. The framework utilizes as a starting point a simplified business model schema known as the Business Model Canvas. We review each one of the elements of the schema in turn, identifying the main risk characteristics associated with each.

Wishes for an Open and Linked 2016

Mon, 21 Dec 2015 13:11:08 +0000

May the Network be with you in 2016

From Open Risk, to all our friends, colleagues, collaborators, users, partners and the public:

Risk Management Skills for the Fintech Era

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:49:45 +0000

Financial services jobs continue being decimated. A recent (as of the initial post date) FT article was a sobering summary of the continuing transformation of the financial sector: 2015 alone has seen more than 10% reduction of the total workforce across large EU/US banks:

Open Risk API Presentation

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 17:26:04 +0000

Presentation at TopQuants 2015: Open Risk API

Improved financial risk management through open data, open source and web technologies is a Presentation given at the TopQuants/DNB Autumn Meeting, Amsterdam, Nov 18, 2015.

Seven Heavens of Finance and the Open Risk API

Wed, 11 Nov 2015 08:18:04 +0000

Back-to-basics is not salvation

It has become trendy since the financial crisis to be wearing an anti-complexity hat in matters concerning the shape of the financial system. This is an understandable reaction to the entangled constructions that had sprung to existence in the hyper-leveraged markets of the naughty noughts.

Open Risk Data

Sun, 18 Oct 2015 10:33:49 +0000

What is the Open Risk Dashboard?

Addressing the risks and opportunities facing businesses and individuals requires a comprehensive, informed and data driven approach that is widely available, easy to use and transparent in methodology. The Open Risk Dashboard is an interactive, highly visual, online resource that supports risk management for users across the EU area and beyond.

Open Risk proud to be funded by EU FIWARE FINODEX accelerator

Sun, 18 Oct 2015 09:43:39 +0000

Open Risk is proud to be funded by the FIWARE FINODEX accelerator!

Finodex, the European accelerator for ICT projects based on Open Data and FIWARE technologies, has already chosen over one hundred projects via two open calls for proposal.

This week the results of the second call evaluation closed in last September have been published, and 52 projects from a total of 297 have been chosen by a panel of experts. These projects will join the other 49 selected in the first open call.

What can Inka Quipus teach us about data management

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 08:18:27 +0000

What can Inka Quipus teach us about data management

If, as it is most probable, you are a typical person, chances are that your knowledge of ancient Peruvian culture is a bit rusty!

Maybe you have some vague high-school memories of an extensive but somewhat “backward” empire (as seen by the then European peoples) that was conquered and then asset-stripped by a handful of aggressive Spanish conquistadors.

Or maybe your best preserved memory is the excitement of reading von Daniken’s rampant speculations about the Nazca lines and ancient extraterrestrial spaceports. But unless it happened that at some point later in life you heard about the work of Prof. Urton and his collaborators, most likely you have no idea what an Incan Quipu is (see image).

04, Open Risk Model Taxonomy

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 4: Open Risk Model Taxonomy

We develop a taxonomy for risk models that aims to support an open source risk models framework. The proposal builds on and extends some commonly used risk taxonomies within financial services firms but introduces some significant new elements. We first review the motivation for risk taxonomies, the concepts and tools that are involved and some weaknesses of current schemes. We try also to clarify the link between risk models and risk taxonomies.

Unbundling the Banks: A How To Guide

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 16:43:37 +0000

Talk of unbundling the banks is all the rage these days (if we believe the chatter coming from fintech startups). Yet upon closer inspection one gets the feeling that these optimistic people might not necessarily know exactly what they are trying to unbundle, the true complexity of a medium-to-large bank, which in turn reflects, at least in part, the complexity of our modern Financial System .

Open Source Risk Data with MongoDB and Python

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 15:04:28 +0000

Open source software is all the rage those days in IT and the concept is making rapid inroads in all parts of the enterprise. An earlier comprehensive survey by Gartner, Inc. found that by 2011 more than half of organizations surveyed had adopted open-source software (OSS) solutions as part of their IT strategy. This percentage may have currently exceeded the 75% mark according to open source advisory firms.

Open Risk API

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 06:47:35 +0000

If you work in financial risk management you will most likely recognize where the following sentence is coming from:

One of the most significant lessons learned from the global financial crisis that began in 2007 was that banks information technology (IT) and data architectures were inadequate to support the broad management of financial risks. This had severe consequences to the banks themselves and to the stability of the financial system as a whole

03, Introducing the Open Risk API

Sun, 31 May 2015 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 3: Introducing the Open Risk API

We develop a proposal for an open source application programming interface (API) that allows for the distributed development, deployment and use of financial risk models. The proposal aims to explore the following key question: how to integrate in a robust and trustworthy manner diverse risk modeling and risk data resources, contributed by multiple authors, using different technologies, and which very likely will evolve over time.

Resources for Concentration Risk

Sun, 03 May 2015 11:44:56 +0000

Resources fo Concentration Risk Management

Concentration Risk Management is a staple of risk management. Open Risk developed a unique and novel set of risk management resources to assist with building in-house knowledge for managing credit concentration risks.

Resources range from courses and online manuals to open source calculators and mobile eLearning games. In this post we have a brief summary of what is available, you can find more details by clicking on the embedded links

The Zen of Modeling

Thu, 23 Apr 2015 08:21:41 +0000

Risk modeling is as much art as it is science

The Zen of Modeling aims to capture the struggle for risk modeling beauty

The four stages of social

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 12:39:36 +0000

Homo Staticus

The web as we now know it burst first into the open in the early nineties. It certainly did not start among the typically more socially active classes. It was an invention by and for nerdy CERN physicists. The objective was to exchange data about elementary particle experiments. But it wasn’t long before academics figured out additional valuable uses of this technology: You could put your face online, along with a CV. This is how “personal” academic webpages came to life. Those early home pages were mostly dour affairs, replete with long publication lists.

02, Confidence Capital - The Principle

Wed, 08 Apr 2015 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 2: Confidence Capital: The Principle

We review the structure of economic capital frameworks commonly used within financial institutions and identify why the derived capital metrics do not explicitly address the needs for maintaining ongoing confidence on the soundness of the firm. In the follow-up to the financial crisis the need for more explicit such tests has been highlighted by regulatory stress testing methodologies.

The mystery of the collapsed cathedral

Wed, 08 Apr 2015 14:28:09 +0000

The mystery of the collapsed cathedral

You walk to the center of an old city, and you see its glorious cathedral lying in ruins. What in the world has happened here? Your investigative instinct goes into overdrive. This is not supposed to happen. Not in peacetime anyway. How can it be that this magnificent edifice, after gracing the town’s central square for who knows how many centuries, is now little more than a rubble pile in the center of town?

The periodic table of risk elements

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 11:49:41 +0000

You know the periodic table of elements, even if you flunked your science courses! It is the large colorful and blocky table that hanged on every school’s classrooms before becoming yet another mobile app. The periodic table is one of the early and iconic achievements of science. It lists all the pure chemical elements found in nature, the building blocks of all possible material substances. Each block contains a set of numbers that unambiguously characterizes each element and a single or two letter abbreviation for each: H for Hydrogen, He for Helium and so forth, going on for over a hundred different elements. When the periodic table was discovered by Mendeleev (apparently in his dream!) it was an extraordinary realization that the physical world has an underlying order at the microscopic level. In his own words:

Revisiting simple concentration indexes

Fri, 27 Mar 2015 22:56:05 +0000

Revisiting simple concentration indexes

Our white paper Revisiting simple concentration indexes reviews the definitions of widely used concentration metrics such as the concentration ratio, the HHI index and the Gini and clarify their meaning and relationships.

01, Revisiting Simple Concentration Indexes

Fri, 27 Mar 2015 17:26:04 +0000

Open Risk White Paper 1: Revisiting Simple Concentration Indexes

We review the definitions of widely used concentration metrics such as the concentration ratio, the HHI index and the Gini and clarify their meaning and relationships. This new analytic framework helps clarify the apparent arbitrariness of simple concentration indexes and brings to the fore the underlying unifying concept behind these metrics, thereby enabling their more informed use in portfolio and risk management applications. We also propose that the sensitivity of concentration indexes to growing concentration should be a defining criterion for adopting an index and explore the sensitivity of common indexes to changing portfolio concentrations. We show that this sensitivity can vary significantly between indexes for parametric families of portfolio distributions and hence selecting and using a simple concentration index should take this aspect carefully into consideration

Visualizing the Stress of US Banks

Thu, 19 Mar 2015 09:03:23 +0000

Visualizing the Stress of US Banks

A recurring cycle of regulatory stress testing exercises has become the new normal in the banking world, at least on the two shores of the northern Atlantic. The periodicity of the European stress testing heartbeat has not yet been firmly established. Did we just miss a beat in 2015 (a so called palpitation) or will the European cycle have two (or more) years periodicity? Who knows. Fortunately, there are no such uncertainties around the US stress testing cycle. The US CCAR rhythm seems to be a very robust annual throb and in March we just got the latest iteration.

Concentrating on Concentration Risk

Fri, 06 Mar 2015 12:55:23 +0000

Concentrating on Concentration Risk

Senior economists such as Ben Bernanke were still studying the 30’s Great Depression when the financial crisis struck in full force circa 2007. Given the complexity of the modern economic and financial landscape compared to the blessed good old days - we have no reports of FWMD (financial weapons of mass destruction) from back then - we can reasonably project that economists will be studying and pontificating on causes and remedies for the current crisis for the next 100 years or so.

Securitisation versus Banking – the Shootout

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 21:33:36 +0000

Securitisation versus Banking

The ever elusive CMU dream

There is(/was) renewed interest in EU-land over deepening a capital markets union, aka CMU. It is among the initiatives being pursued by the Commission in order to help accelerate growth in the European Union.

The initiative encompasses many elements, both around equity (shares) and debt markets. One important pillar of the CMU aims to re-launch some version of an EU securitisation market. This segment was never really defined in a EU-wide basis. In the pre-crisis European financial landscape there were wide disparities in the degree of adoption, legal frameworks, preferred structures etc. among the different countries comprising the EU. In any case, since the financial crisis there has been a steady decline in securitisation volumes, which amongst others, hinders certain types of exceptional central bank measures (i.e., purchasing securitised assets).

A mini course on risk management

Sun, 08 Feb 2015 13:37:15 +0000

A mini course on risk management, its perils and the silver lining

When talking about risk management, it is not very clear what we are talking about in broad terms, it is definitely not getting clearer when we start getting into the details and it is finally not clear how to best use the (possibly flawed) insights we produce.

Change of URL’s to improve readability

Sun, 01 Feb 2015 10:21:57 +0000

We changed the URL structure of the Open Risk web site “front page” to improve readability.

This change should not break any links to pages.

If you do notice a problem please let us know at info at openriskmanagement dot com

Open Risk Commentary on Simple Securitisations

Wed, 28 Jan 2015 16:05:15 +0000

Criteria for identifying simple, transparent and comparable securitisations

(See BIS D304)

Our view is that securitisation is fundamental financial technology and there is no intrinsic technical reason why it could not be harnessed to best serve the functioning of modern economies.

Open Source Risk Modeling Manifesto

Tue, 27 Jan 2015 17:28:32 +0000

This page is a summary of a presentation given at the 2014 Autumn TopQuants Meeting, aka, the Open Source Risk Modeling Manifesto.

The dismal state of quantitative risk modeling

The current framework of internal risk modeling at financial institutions has had a fatal triple stroke. We saw in quick sequence: market risk, operational risk, and credit risk measurement failures, affecting practically all financial sector business models.

Its all about balance these days!

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 21:25:16 +0000

In our personal lives, it is the balance between work and life, or the dreadful weight balance. In the professional sphere it might be the balance between debt and equity in the financial industry, or the balance between convenience and citizen privacy in the new tech industry, or the welfare of the many balanced against the property of the few, or finally the geopolitical balance of power of different peoples Balance ensures sustainability as it helps steer away from the risks that lurk at the extremes. It is actually hard to find scenarios in which a balanced approach would not be the optimal way to complete any meaningful journey. Maybe in a world with full visibility and zero risk.

FuriousBanker: The Credit Detox Challenge

Mon, 08 Dec 2014 08:35:25 +0000

FuriousBanker(TM) helps you learn risk management concepts in a fun and engaging way. This educational game series for mobiles and tablets is developed by Open Risk to enable modern interactive elearning for people working (or aspiring to work) in financial risk management.

The first episode sees FuriousBanker facing The credit detox challenge:

Top-Ten Reasons Why Open Source is the Future of Risk Modeling

Sun, 16 Nov 2014 20:01:53 +0000

Financial Risk Modelling has suffered enormous setbacks in recent years, with all major strands of modelling (market, credit, operational risk) proven to have debilitating limitations. It is impossible to imagine a modern financial system that does not make extensive use of risk quantification tools, yet rebuilding confidence that these tools are fit-for-purpose will require significant changes. These need to improve governance, transparency, quality standards and in some areas even the development of completely new strands of modelling.

Credit Detox Series: Step 1, Credit Correlation

Mon, 10 Nov 2014 10:52:22 +0000

We are happy to publish the first installment of a trilogy that focuses on the risk factors that can turn any credit portfolio toxic.

The first topic is default correlation, a topic that is both core to understanding credit risk and much misunderstood.

Enjoy!

New App Release: RegNews, the Regulatory News Aggregator

Fri, 10 Oct 2014 13:36:48 +0000

RegNews, the Regulatory News Aggregator

With all the ongoing activity around financial regulation having a convenient aggregation point for the main news is an indispensable tool for financial risk managers. This prompted us to build and roll out the Regulatory News App (RegNews in short), which is now live and freely accessible here. The app is designed to be usable both on a desktop and mobile environment.

Free Online Courses on Credit Concentration

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 10:12:45 +0000

As part of the public beta testing programme, two new Open Risk Academy courses are accessible absolutely free (and with no strings attached :-).

The courses are introductions to measuring credit name or sector concentrations in credit portfolios. They cover the following topics:

The concept of credit name or sector concentration - what it is and how it can be measured
The regulatory context and how the issue is covered by requirements and regulatory guidance
The measurement of credit name or sector concentrations using basic indicators and indexes
The measurement of credit name or sector concentrations using more advanced (risk based) indicators

The courses run from Oct 7th till Oct 13th. Read more about prerequisites for the courses here:

Open Risk Overview

Fri, 19 Sep 2014 08:07:36 +0000

Open Risk Presentation summarizing the Public Beta Phase

Overview of the motivation for initiating Open Risk and the solutions being delivered in the current phase.

Venue: Online
Location: The world
Time: September 18th 2014
Link to presentation: Open Risk Overview

Benchmarking and the future use of internal capital models

Fri, 19 Sep 2014 07:54:35 +0000

The rationale for continuing with internal capital models in the Basel 3 world

Overview of the challenges and opportunities offered by internal capital models (economic capital models) in the post-crisis era. Conference Presentation given at:

Venue: 2nd Annual Capital Modelling under Basel III (Marcus Evans Conference)
Location: London
Time: January 28th 2014
Link to presentation: Local file

September 15: Rolling into Public Beta

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 18:35:37 +0000

Can’t turn around, we have come this far by faith…

Open Risk is now open for public beta testing.

We’ll keep the site in public beta stage for as long as needed to smooth out the rough edges.

We got the first “like” on social media, the lucky first liker earned a lifetime membership award. Now we have to think of something suitable for the second and third, as a winner takes all mentality is not in our world outlook.

Academy Demo Course

Mon, 08 Sep 2014 14:38:26 +0000

A CrashCourse (short course) introducing the Open Risk Academy for first time users is now available here. Please try it out!

New Python Module for Credit Portfolio Models Released

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 14:32:13 +0000

A Python module of analytic solutions suitable for testing credit portfolio models has been uploaded in the Open Risk github repository

New Course: Sector Concentration Measurement

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 13:41:59 +0000

Building out further the Open Risk Academy curriculum around Credit Risk Concentration management, we just added a course on sector concentration.

Limited beta testing of website now ongoing…

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 22:30:34 +0000

Alpha testing did not reveal any fatal problems with the website or the Open Risk Academy website. Many thanks to Odysseus for painstakingly testing everything!

As of this weekend login details were sent to select volunteers with a mission to further test drive Open Risk. This limited beta testing will be ongoing for the duration of May.

Feeback survey for our website now active

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 19:26:34 +0000

Direct feedback of your experience with the website is much appreciated, but we thought also of simplifying and streamlining the process based on an online survey. It is (Was) available here (Now Closed) and it will be open in this form until the end of beta testing.

Thanks for participating!

Accessibility

Fri, 11 Apr 2014 21:25:06 +0000

Our Commitment to Accessibility

We strive to make all Open Risk services as generally accessible as possible, e.g., by testing all areas of the site against the accessibility standards of W3C.

Specifically, we believe that the integrated and online availability of the various documentation resources is a step forward to making this important knowledge base more widely accessible.

Frequently Asked Questions

Fri, 11 Apr 2014 21:24:26 +0000

This is a General FAQ covering all the Open Risk tools and services. More specific FAQ and How-To’s are available within the respective tools.

How do I get more involved?

Getting in touch is a good start! Email us at info at openriskmanagement dot com.

Open Risk website open for alpha testing!

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 07:10:34 +0000

As of April 8 (late at night 🙂) the Open Risk website (this website!) is uploaded and ready for alpha testing!

Copyright

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 16:48:14 +0000

Notice

Unless otherwise stated (see below the list of exceptions), Open Risk owns the intellectual property rights in the Open Risk websites and any and all material on the website. All information contained herein is protected by copyright law.

ECB AQR Programme Documentation

Wed, 02 Apr 2014 12:59:07 +0000

The asset quality review (AQR) was one of the components of the comprehensive assessment performed by the ECB prior to assuming full responsibility for supervision under the single supervisory mechanism in November 2014.

Open Risk developed an early online accessible version of the AQR manual that offers additional means to access and browse the Phase 2 ECB AQR Manual.

Pilot Course on Credit Name Concentration

Wed, 02 Apr 2014 12:09:58 +0000

We just added a new course at the Open Risk Academy!

The course covers name concentration risk measurement, chiefly the construction of suitable metrics based on portfolio data (Free registration is required for this course).

For more details see the course page.

Feedback

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 23:38:41 +0000

How you can provide feedback:

For any General Feedback, the old-fashioned but reliable way at info (at) openrisk (dot) eu. Further, each one of our projects has its own feedback channels:

Open Risk Manual Feedback via the feedback button on any page. Talk pages on each article allow for more detailed feedback / contributions.
Open Risk Academy Feedback via internal messages
For any of our open source projects: Open Risk Model Repository Issues for issues, requests and/or contributions
For blog posts or any and other content on this site, on our Community Forum or Reddit Channel or Mastodon Channel

First set of Open Risk Manual articles released

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 14:43:32 +0000

The Risk Manual is one of the core tools of the Open Risk Commons.2

We have released a first set of article entries covering a broad area of risk management topics.

New Tools for Credit Portfolio Calculations

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 15:48:38 +0000

The first batch of open source tools focusing on Credit Portfolio calculations is now available here.

The functionality aims to standardize Name Concentration Measurement (concentrationMetrics)

Further Resources

Open Risk Academy Course CNC13010

Terms and Conditions

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 15:36:40 +0000

Terminology

The following terminology applies to these Terms and Conditions, Privacy Statement and Copyright Notice: Client, “You” and “Your” refers to you, the person accessing this website in whichever capacity and accepting the OpenRisk’s terms and conditions.

The Company, “Ourselves”, “We” and Us, refers to OpenRisk.

Privacy Policy

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 14:21:46 +0000

Privacy Statement regarding Personal Data

We are committed to honor and protect your privacy. Our business model is not predicated on monetizing your personal data with third parties. Any data collected are used only within this Company on a need-to-know basis.

Any individually identifiable information related to this data will never be used in any way different to that stated above without your explicit permission.

Community

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:06:07 +0000

Open Risk Commons

Open Risk as part of its mission actively supports the formation of a Community, building and adopting free and open risk management tools. The aim is to benefit and enhance financial risk management across the board.

The Community is built around the core efforts covering different community needs and the central role is played by the Open Risk Manual

Hello World!

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 12:50:07 +0000

Hello World

This is our first Open Risk post! Godspeed.

Open Source Risk Models

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 10:41:02 +0000

Open Source is Core to our Vision

As stated in our mission, Open Risk advocates and supports open source, transparent, peer reviewable, methodologies and risk models. From the Great Financial Crisis, to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the Sustainability Challenge and onwards, time and again we see conventional (proprietary and closed) risk models and risk management tools being challenged, failing to deliver their purported utility when it is needed most.

Blog Archive

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 12:14:20 +0000

Welcome to the Open Risk Blog Archive

The purpose of our blog is to provide updates on important news and developments around Open Risk and a running commentary on external developments related to our mission.

You can view posted articles either from the front-page by selecting the relevant post category or tag from the right column.

Contact Information

Wed, 02 Oct 2013 14:31:31 +0000

Open Risk Contact Information

Open Risk is domiciled in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

We are registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, KvK Number 59672056.

For any inquiries you can contact us by email at info at openriskmanagement dot com.