BLACK DIAMOND RISK - Key Persons
Al Clark is a Senior Risk Consultant at Black Diamond Risk Enterprises where he specializes in Enterprise Risk Management. Al is a 20 year veteran of the Risk and Insurance Services Industry. A California licensed Broker/Agent, Al began his career in reinsurance brokerage, was an early proponent of quantitative risk modeling tools (Catastrophe Modeling) for reinsurers while at Guy Carpenter (EQECAT), migrated to Enterprise Technology management at Marsh and subsequently led business development efforts on the West Coast for a leading Risk Management / Business Process Management software services provider.
Al delivers risk management process expertise and work flow optimization strategies to clients of all sizes. Drawing upon his experience with operational, hazard, business and strategic risk, Al provides objective advice and custom solutions to clients seeking to better manage their organization's risk profile and empower their risk management function to enhance stakeholder value.
Andrew Berry has over 20 years experience in property casualty insurance and is an acknowledged expert on the subject of Insurance Technology. He is a member of the RIMS Technology Advisory Committee and was the founding editor of RIMSTech, the Society's technology bulletin. In addition to his work at Black Diamond Risk Enterprises, Andrew is President and founder of Newport Risk Services, a professional services and consulting firm.
Prior to founding Newport Risk Services, Andrew was co-founder and President of GRX Technologies (GRX), an industry leader in the development of collaborative technologies streamlining the management of large commercial insurance programs. GRX was at the forefront of the use of XML data standards in the insurance industry and was active in the development of ACORD's data standards initiative. As President of GRX he established and ran the professional services division of the company. This included the creation and management of The Joule, a member service of the OIL Group of Companies, a group of mutual insurers in the energy industry.
Andrew started his career as an insurance broker in the London and UK retail brokerage markets. He then spent nine years as a risk management consultant with Tillinghast - Towers Perrin in London and Boston. He has also worked in the captive management industry with Strategic Risk Solutions, an independent captive management company. While at Strategic Risk Solutions, Andrew developed approaches for the use of web-based technology for managing the exchange of information on group captives.
Andrew has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Nottingham University in the UK and a MBA (summa cum laude), with a concentration in entrepreneurship, from Babson College. He holds Fellowship of the Institute of Risk Management (FIRM) and Fellowship of the Chartered Insurance Institute (FCII) designations.
Job Titles:
- Head of Research and Development at NATIXIS He
Dr. Michel Crouhy is Head of Research and Development at NATIXIS He has the bankwide oversight on all quantitative research and the development of new products and applications supporting the trading and structuring businesses. He is also responsible for implementing a bankwide RAROC system. He is the founder and President of the IXS Foundation for Quantitative Finance which finances academic research and world class events in the area of quantitative finance.
Job Titles:
- Managing Partner
- Founding Executive Director of the Masters
Dr. Mark, is the founding Executive Director of the Masters in Financial Engineering program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Anderson School of Management. He is also the cofounder of the Professional Risk Managers' International Association (PRMIA), which offers programs for Risk Industry professionals. Dr. Mark earned his Ph.D., from New York University's Graduate School of Engineering and Science. Subsequently Dr. Mark received an Advanced Professional Certificate (APC) in accounting from NYU's Stern Graduate School of Business and is a graduate of the Harvard Business Schools Advanced Management Program.
Dr. Bob Mark is a Managing Partner of Black Diamond Risk Enterprises, which provides corporate governance, risk management consulting, risk software tools and transaction services. He is also the Founding Executive Director of the Masters of Financial Engineering Program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Dr. Mark was awarded the Financial Risk Manager of the Year by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) and is cofounder of the Professional Risk Managers' International Association (PRMIA). He serves on several boards.
Prior to his current position, he was the Senior Executive Vice-President and Chief Risk Officer (CRO) at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). Dr. Mark was a member of the Management Committee and was also responsible for the Corporate Treasury function. His global responsibility covered all credit, market, and operating risks for all of CIBC as well as for its subsidiaries.
Prior to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), he was the partner in charge of the Financial Risk Management Consulting practice at Coopers & Lybrand (C&L), now PwC. The risk management practice at C&L advised clients on risk management issues and was directed toward financial institutions and multi-national corporations. This specialty area also coordinated the delivery of the firm's accounting, tax, control, and litigation services to provide clients with integrated and comprehensive risk management solutions and opportunities.
Prior to his position at C&L, he was a managing director in the Asia, Europe, and Capital Markets Group (AECM) at Chemical Bank, now JPMC. His responsibilities within AECM encompassed risk management, asset/liability management, research (quantitative analysis), strategic planning and analytical systems. He served on the Senior Credit Committee of the Bank. Before he joined Chemical Bank, he was a senior officer at Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (HKSB) where he headed the technical analysis trading group within the Capital Markets Sector.
He earned his PhD in applied math from New York University's Graduate School of Engineering and Science, graduating first in his class. Subsequently, he received an Advanced Professional Certificate (APC) in accounting from NYU's Stern Graduate School of Business, and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program. He is an Adjunct Professor and co-author of Risk Management (McGraw-Hill), published in 2001 as well as a co -author of The Essentials of Risk Management (McGraw Hill) published in 2006 & the 2 nd Edition published in 2014. Dr. Mark was a Risk Advisory Director at Entergy, served on the boards of ISDA, Royal Conservatory, Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, IBM's Deep Computing Institute and PRMIA as well as the Chairperson of the National Asset/Liability Management Association (NALMA).
By Michel Crouhy, Dan Galai, Robert Mark. ‘The Essentials of Risk Management' provides you with a practical, non-ivory tower approach that is necessary to effectively implement a superior risk management program. Learn More
Job Titles:
- Risk, Governance and Control Expert
Jean Hinrichs is a risk, governance and control expert who has extensive experience working with a variety of regulators through executive management roles in large financial institutions. She works at Black Diamond on consulting assignments to assess, develop and improve risk and control functions.
Jean Hinrichs retired from Fannie Mae in March 2008 as chief audit executive where she restructured internal audit and created a high-performance team during a large, complex financial restatement. Prior to Fannie Mae, Jean was chief risk officer at Barclays Global Investors (BGI) where she restructured the risk management function that included credit and market risk, operational risk, legal, compliance, internal audit, insurance, and corporate security. She initially joined BGI in 1997 to create a global internal audit function. Before BGI, Jean served as general auditor of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank and before that she held a variety of positions at Unocal Corporation. Jean has over 15 years experience creating or transforming enterprise risk management and internal audit functions.
Jean earned an MBA from San Francisco State University. She is a Certified Internal Auditor and Certified Fraud Examiner. She is past president of the San Francisco Chapter of the Institute of Internal Auditors and was co-regional director and founding member of the Bay Area Chapter of The Professional Risk Managers' International Association. She is also a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business.
Morton has 35 years of experience as a risk manager and consultant specializing in credit risk management. He provides banks and other financial institutions with the policies, methodologies, and infrastructures required to plan, optimize, and control the economic performance of the credit portfolio, and also to help meet and leverage Basel regulatory requirements.
Morton has worked with leading banks in providing capabilities to optimize RAROC performance while at the same time managing credit concentration risk at the obligor, segment, and overall portfolio level. An important part of this work includes identification, quantification, and stress-testing of possible scenarios that could potentially create extreme outlier risk in the overall portfolio.
Prior to this, Morton was a cofounder of the Risk Practice at American Management Systems, where for ten years he then served as Senior Risk Consultant in various assignments with leading financial institutions in Europe and the UK. Increasingly, much of this work came to involve development of capabilities to enable more active credit portfolio management, including strategic portfolio planning to drive and optimize primary market origination and secondary market trading activities. Morton worked with clients to define the required new business models, including new business processes and organizational roles and responsibilities, as well as supporting analytical models. He also provided the bridge between the new Business Models and their systems realization. He also guided implementation programs, including internal communications and change management.
Prior to this Morton was with Citibank for close to twenty years. He founded and then managed the bank's first credit portfolio risk management department, responsible for measuring portfolio quality on a global basis, identifying potential high risk portfolio segments, and monitoring remedial management programs. He developed independent loan loss forecasts and helped evaluate loss provisions, the loan loss reserve, and capital adequacy. Reporting to the Chief Auditor and to the Head of Credit Policy, Morton also served as a principal liaison with the Regulatory authorities and external auditors.
Morton holds an undergraduate degree in Industrial Management from MIT, and also a Masters Degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management with a concentration in Finance. Following this he also earned a Masters Degree in Operations Research from the Columbia University School of Engineering. He has participated in Executive Training Programs at California (Berkeley), and also at Stanford in advanced credit risk modeling. While at Citibank, he completed core credit training and participated in various senior credit training programs.
Job Titles:
- Senior Consultant of Black Diamond
Wesley Sun, Senior Consultant of Black Diamond, has twenty years experience in banking and capital markets products and technology. In providing business solutions to major financial institutions, he focuses on risk management, regulatory reporting, trading, and treasury management. With extensive knowledge of risk management requirements and capital markets initiatives, Wesley assists financial services clients in transforming their businesses to new levels of operation and growth.
Having worked for EDS for ten years, Wesley helped financial institutions in identifying their business needs and operation requirements, Web-based application design and development, as well as design and implementation of trade processing and risk management systems. His clients included ABN AMRO Bank, American Express Bank, IQ Financial Systems, Societe Generale, JP Morgan Chase, and Development Bank of Singapore.
Wesley was an Assistant General Manager at CIBC Wood Gundy in the Risk Advisory Group. He also worked at CIBC Financial Products division and was responsible for coordinating global equity derivatives processing, systems testing, and development of an automated global risk reporting for derivatives portfolios.
Before joining CIBC, Wesley was Director of International Treasury Services at MasterCard International in New York, where he managed foreign currency exposures. Prior to that he worked at Marine Midland Bank as a Treasury Tactician and traded derivatives. Wesley has MA in Economics from Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and APC in Finance from Stern Business School of New York University.