Operational Risk Quantification Using Extreme Value Theory and Copulas : From Theory to Practice

In this paper we point out several pitfalls of the standard methodologies for quantifying operational losses. Firstly, we use Extreme Value Theory to model real heavy-tailed data. We show that using the Value-at-Risk as a risk measure may lead to a mis-estimation of the capital requirements. In particular, we examine the issues of stability and coherence and relate them to the degree of heavy-tailedness of the data. Secondly, we introduce dependence between the business lines using Copula Theory. We show that standard economic thinking about diversification may be inappropriate when infinite-mean distributions are involved