Not another damned exam!?!
| Pages | 9-13 |
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13581980410810632 |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| Author | David Bland |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance |
Comment
Not another damned exam!?!
David Bland
Received: 30th September, 2003
31 Dundee Court, 73 Wapping High Street, London E1W 9YG, UK; tel: +44 (0)29 7481 8234;
fax: +44 (0)20 7553 2963; e-mail: david.bland@postwatch.co.uk
David Bland OBE was, until 2000, Director-
General of the Chartered Insurance Insti-
tute, the world’s leading professional body
in insurance and related financial services
with 70,000 members in 128 countries.
From 2000 to 2002, he was Head of East
London Business School at the University
of East London and he currently serves as
Chairman of Postwatch (South East Eng-
land) among a number of other appoint-
ments.
He has published a dozen books includ-
ing ‘Principles and practice of insurance’,
available in 14 languages, and over 90
papers. His latest book is ‘Treasury risk’
published by Witherby (2000).
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS: competence, FSA, opera-
tional risk, orphan funds, qualifications,
Sandler products, stakeholder myth
This piece critically reviews the potential
impact of the FSA’s application of its ‘Opera-
tional Risk’ approach to regulation. It uses the
Treasury proposals for ‘Sandler’ products as an
example of the disastrous results that can arise
from the combination of political direction of
product design with inept regulation.
Having sloughed off the Deanship of a
large business school
1
in the autumn of
2002, I thought that I had permanently fin-
ished examining when two professional
institutes simultaneously asked me to be a
chief examiner. In both cases a new exami-
nation was being established to test a com-
pletely new syllabus. The Institute of Risk
Management asked me to lead a new paper
on treasury risk and the Institute of Finan-
cial Services (IFS)
2
asked me to start their
new test on risk assessment and evaluation.
Thoughts arising from this task provide the
theme for this paper.
For several years now the IFS diploma-
level examinations have been moderated by
the University of Manchester Institute of
Science and Technology (UMIST), which
includes one of Britain’s best business
schools. Successful students gain both their
IFS diploma and the Manchester BSc. Can-
didates have typically taken a first degree in
a subject that is well away from financial
services. No examination specifically in risk
had featured in the IFS/UMIST syllabuses
until the new programme was devised (to
be sat first in 2004); the innovation reflects
the massive and growing interest in con-
cepts of risk that has afflicted regulators and
financial services providers alike since they
became embroiled in Basel I and the parallel
development of jam jar accounting for
insurance reserves (under the sobriquet
‘risk-based capital’).
The new course presents risk assessment
and measurement, viewed right across an
Page 9
Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance Volume 12 Number 1
Journal of Financial Regulation
and Compliance, Vol. 12, No. 1,
2004, pp. 9–13
#Henry Stewart Publications,
1358–1988
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