Risk Management Resource Center

Managing risk is important at any time. Given the renewed volatility and uncertainty surrounding currencies, interest rates and commodities, how should your company be hedging these exposures? What's the outlook for the euro and other currencies? What's the outlook for long term interest rates? What are potential short and long term effects from the ongoing debt crisis on U.S. corporations? Does your company have the right policies and metrics in place to accurately measure your risk exposures?

The AFP Risk Management Resource Center is here to provide information on solutions and best practices to manage your essential risk needs.

• 2013 Risk Survey
  
  

  AFP and Oliver Wyman have partnered to produce a series of annual risk management surveys to study the impact that uncertainty has on Treasury and Finance. Financial professionals at many organizations are faced with the challenge of forecasting earnings in a new era of uncertainty. Volatility, interdependence, the increasing speed of change and what in the past were only-once-in-100-year long-tail events (or black swans) are now, more than ever, defining the operating environment for business. The current Risk survey focuses on how organizations are addressing uncertainty through a risk-adjusted framework, including forecasting, risk culture, organizational structure, metrics and other solutions.

  
  

   

  
  
• Whitepaper: Defining Your Risk Appetite
  
  

  Complex risks are rapidly redefining businesses. In response, companies need to craft risk appetite statements that take into account, and are applicable to, a wider range of key performance drivers. Most directors recognize that a well-defined risk appetite is crucial to business success. But few of the companies they oversee have been able to unlock the full benefits that such a framework provides. Developing an effective framework is crucial as complex risks rapidly change the way businesses must operate.

  
  

 



•  In Practice Guide: Six Steps to Assess Commodity Risk Exposure
  

  Given the current and future trends in commodity prices and volatility, every company must better understand its true commodity exposure. Companies can often be squeezed by rising and volatile commodity input prices that cannot be passed along to customers in their entirety. A commodity risk management program can help. Not all organizations can, or should, adopt the sophisticated mechanisms of a pure commodity business. However, most organizations, particularly those in the middle of the value chain, can improve their commodity risk analytics.

 

• Corporate Treasurers Council (CTC) Risk Guides 

- Counterparty Risk Management
- FX Risk Management
- Corporate Insurance - NEW

• 2012 Risk Survey
• ERM Guide
• In Practice Guide: Counterparty Risk
• Risk! Monthly e-newsletter  
• Risk news articles

• Managing Bank Counterparty Risk
• Balancing both Customer Credit Risk and Supplier Risk
• Business Continuity: A Corporate-Bank Dialogue on Planning, Prevention and Protaganism
• No Decision is Still a Decision: Interest Rates Won’t Be Zero Forever
• Currency Hedge Policy Implications of European Debt Crisis
• Cross Border Acquisitions: FX and Interest Rate Risk Issues and Obstacles to Hedging
• Developing the Right Risk/Return Management Framework for Short Term Cash Investments
• Overcoming the Hedge Accounting Challenge: A Treasurer’s Perspective
• Effective FX Strategies for Managing Currency Exposure

• Investing Cash: Managing Risks and Looking for Investment Opportunities in the Cash and Short Duration Markets  
• FX Hedge Optimization - Quantification Methodologies and Implementation Best Practices  
• Financial Risk Management - Evolution of a Hedging Strategy  
• Hedging FX Transaction and Translation Risk with Average Rate/Strike Instruments  
• Advanced Money Market Fund Due Diligence for Effective Enterprise Risk Management  
• Maintaining an Effective Financial Business Continuity Plan  

• AFP Fraudwatch: Essential Controls for Treasury, Finance
  With payments fraud running rampant, a recent AFP webinar held by a treasury executive provided especially timely advice. Effective internal controls include exception processing, activity specific accounts and more.  
• 6 Tips Treasurers Can Use to Reduce Payment Vendor Risk
  Payments vendors will claim they are PCI compliant. But smart treasury and finance professionals shouldn't take their word for it. 
• Murky Outlook: Treasurers Not Taking on Risk
  Although the recent AFP Corporate Cash Indicators™ suggests that corporate treasurers have become more willing to spend some of their excess cash, many do not anticipate a large uptick in spending on capital investments for some time. Treasurers at a recent roundtable in New York co-hosted by BlackRock and the AFP Corporate Treasurers Council indicated they are still very hesitant to take on more risk and spend more money.
• AFP Fraudwatch: New Payment Channels Threaten Corporate Cash
  This week, the recent decrease in fraud incidents might be an indication that fraud is evolving, and moving to a new payments channel. Also, what do recent cybersecurity initiatives by the government mean for corporates?
• How Treasurers Manage Insurance Risk: The Newest Trend
  Treasury risk managers are taking a new approach to the way they identify, aggregate and manage insurance risk. The growing sophistication of insurance markets is giving a boost to the captives market.