I am Venkat, CRO of Jupiter šŸ‘‹

News from Jupiter Humans of Jupiter
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My role as a Chief Risk Officer is to develop the Risk Framework for Jupiter. My outlook towards Risk Management can be summarised into three sections.

1. Risk management is a culture and not just a set of rules.

Risk Management is not a stand-alone function. Uncertainty lies in every aspect of the business. A Financial institution ( for that matter any organisation) has numerous processes, and each process often has an observable end-state. Risk management must measure these at a granular level to develop controls but also aggregate them.

Total Risk, an organisation, faces is much more substantial than the sum of Risk observed across all its processes. I think Risk Management is a culture and not just a rule-based Strategy.

2. Risk Management needs to look at customer outcomes.

Risk management over time has evolved; it is a lot more data-driven, and excellent practices of process mapping have been adapted; however, I think Risk Management only works if everyone in the Organisation participates. Risk ā€˜thinkingā€™ must become a seamless way to develop product and customer service. Risk management over the years has broadened its goal. The ā€˜oldā€™ school was to look internally and tighten the process and develop a control framework that reduces the Risk of the Organisation. It occasionally missed a key objective which is ā€œcustomer outcomeā€.

The New Risk Framework looks to focus on the customer and measure Risk by linking it to customer outcomes.

3. Protect customers & Organisation across business cycles.

Affordability ( Can the customer afford the loan ? ) and Sustainability ( Can the customer pay the loan over the life of the loan ) is becoming critical parameters in defining the Risk Framework. The frequent collapse of the financial system has made risk management professionals think of a longer horizon for their framework.

Risk management must be though the cycle for it is critical that it protects the customers and organisations when business cycles are not favourable.

I will reach out to the community to improve how Risk can look at customer outcomes. In the meantime, what do you think I spend the most time as a CRO these days? Tell me in the replies below

See you soon. On a lighter note-

Beatles song on what we can avoid !!
Organisations singing to the Risk management team :grinning: in times of trouble

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Hi Venkat,

Thanks a lot for sharing valuable insights. Over the years Risk management has transitioned from a mere check the box approach to a more forward looking exercise with emphasis on outcomes achieved for customers and market.

The drivers of poor outcomes / Harm could be possibly from the existing culture, business model,
products & service Design and market alliances.

This would necessitate measures to identify outcomes that may be perceived unfair / Risky.

e.g. Across products, customer segments, customer journey, across business lines do we have sporadic cases that offer poor customer value. I guess you would be focusing on some of the critical areas here.

Considering regulators are also evolving and have become early adopters of digital, we possibly can expect more measures to address customer vulnerability.

On a lighter note, One of the studies in the US published by HBS (If i am not mistaken), indicated that organizations having CROs had a larger Risk appetite than their peers :slight_smile:

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Morning :coffee:. The Digital journey allows us ( banks / services) to customise. I spend time understanding the ā€˜nuancesā€™ of possible journeys. I do think there is an opportunity to think of Risk management from first principles ( as you say ā€œIdentify outcomesā€ but may be ground-up).

Wonderfully articulated, would love to hear and learn from you in Risk Workshops.

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@Venkat Your outlook is certainly interesting. One question, whatā€™s the risk management process at Jupiter and how do you collaborate across teams? Just curious.

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Thanks Jaggi.

Risk management is Top-down and bottom-up process

  1. Top-down for you need set to align Risk management with Business goals & Target market e.g. risk appetite
  2. Bottom-up for you need to align to business process to Risk Appetite e.g how do design authentication or information security protocol

Currently as we set the processes and products I am embedding both top-down principles and bottom-up procedures. Given this, I have to work closely with all teams product, service etc. However, the Data Science team and Engineering team are key -partners in building the risk infrastructure

I hope that answers your questions. Happy to give more details or share principles from Jupiter.

Appreciate you reaching out to us.

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Hi Venkat @Venkat

Liked your outlook about risk management. I am curious to know how Jupiter is going about risk governance and strategy part considering the digital bank. Apart from it, what kind of retail credit products the Bank is targeting and the way to assess it - inhouse scorecards or third party.

Would like to have further discussions on above and other areas of risk management which are crucial in this phase of the Bank.

Regards
Suresh Wadhwani

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Hi Suresh,

Thank you for posting your thoughts. Governance will need to align with the entity we will evolve into. In early days we must mirror governance models of partners which will critical for providing assurance.

What do I mean by ā€˜mirror governance modelā€™?

To start with If we work with Banks, we must mirror its Governance. However, Jupiter will have more than one partner. Hence, it needs to go one step further and define an over encompassing framework that accommodates the risks and working principles of Jupiter as an entity. We are building the basic blocks now.

Data, insights and decision making - Early days, we will build several heuristic models that need to be ā€œfedā€ by real-world outcomes of Jupiter. We could rely on third-party to get the data credit bureau, fraud parameters for device or syndicate fraud etc. However, as we develop an internal understanding, we will develop the models that suit our product offering.

Happy to discuss in more details. Thanks

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@Venkat ya doing really greatā€¦get them allā€¦on Jupiterā€¦appreciate sharing ur insight with usā€¦love to be a customerā€¦