Enterprise Risk Management in Financial Intermediation Revisited

This paper amplifies themes growing out of Greenbaum, 2012. That paper presented a framework for thinking about Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). We begin this paper by deconstructing the concepts of risk, risk management and ERM. These are all unsettled ideas, but they have been adapted and deployed in the effort to advance management techniques in public companies and other types of organizations concerned with their mortality. We next explore the distinction between core risks, those that businesses process profitably and ancillary risks, all others that constitute a nuisance in that the firm possesses no special skills in dealing with them. In the final section, we share some normative thoughts about ERM as a process. The perspective is unabashedly that of the board member. At the end of the day, ERM is little more than formality designed to reduce the threat of terminal hazards, hazards that tend to be ignored in the normal course of events