Certification for Operational Risk

[capricorian313]

Hello All,

My question with every one who see this board or question in particular. Would you please advice which certification is beneficial for me in my career. I am banker and working as a manager operational risk.

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Hi capricorian313,

I think of operational risk in two ways, shallow and deep. Shallowly, OpRisk shows up in the FRM and the PRM; both of these exams have allocations to the discipline of 'operational risk' (GARP's FRM: 25%, the PRM: < 20%). But to be blunt about it, OpRisk in this context is young and evolving, largely about (i) risks in financial firms that are not market & credit risk (the nonfinancial piece is growing in the FRM but still...) and (ii) case studies (again, 3/4 cases are financial firms). So, in the first respect, FRM and PRM do give exposure to operational risk but here it is the least developed (most rapidly changing) of the disciplines. I doubt you could argue either of these arm a candidate with deep OpRisk tools...

The other way, more to your question, is the broader (more realistic) field of enterprise (integrated) risk management. Surely a field of growing importance going forward. The only one i know of here is CERA offered by the Society of Actuaries. There probably are others? (I know some firms self-certify). It surprised me a bit that GARP and PRMIA, when they made their product line extensions, haven't so far included OpRisk as a independent (but this would be a difficult exam to create!) You might check risk mgmt association, http://www.rmahq.org/RMA/ those folks seem to spend a lot of time on OpRisk...

David