This course covers the fundamentals of financial risk management, with a focus on practical implementation and application. It will focus on a variety of risks that financial managers face and the tools available for managing them. Particularly, we shall focus on credit risk, interest rate, foreign exchange risk, and operational risk.

Extreme market events are a key risk management concern, especially in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the many unresolved issues it presented. We will be investigating some of the biggest financial shocks through case studies and solve these cases by applying the concepts acquired in this course.

The course seeks to explain what risk and risk management mean in a corporate setting, common methods for managing and measuring risk, and developing a risk management strategy.

Students attending this course are expected to have a basic knowledge of finance and accounting. This course is aimed at those who want to understand the essentials of risk management. Please note that this course does not serve as a preparation for the FRM exams.

After finishing this course, students will be able to:

Distinguish between risk, uncertainty, and randomness
Distinguish between risk management and risk measurement
Understand the importance of risk governance
Describe risk budgeting and understand its role in risk governance
Realize the importance of managing people, processes, technology, and organizational structure for effective risk management
Recognize the difference between idiosyncratic and systematic risks
Define, classify, and distinguish between financial risks
Identify and understand the principles of credit, foreign exchange, interest rate, and operational risk
Recognize probability, standard deviation, Value-at-Risk (VaR), and scenario analysis/stress testing as risk measurement metrics
Distinguish between risk prevention and avoidance
Define and apply the concepts of self-insurance, risk shifting, and risk transfer
Realize insurance as a way to transfer risks
Recognize outsourcing and derivatives as two ways of shifting risk.