David Jamieson Bolder – författare

How might one determine if a financial institution is taking risk in a balanced and productive manner? A powerful tool to address this question is economic capital, which is a model-based measure of the amount of equity that an entity must hold to satisfactorily offset its risk-generating activities. This book, with a particular focus on the credit-risk dimension, pragmatically explores real-world economic-capital methodologies and applications. It begins with the thorny practical issues surrounding the construction of an (industrial-strength) credit-risk economic-capital model, defensibly determining its parameters, and ensuring its efficient implementation. It then broadens its gaze to examine various critical applications and extensions of economic capital; these include loan pricing, the computation of loan impairments, and stress testing. Along the way, typically working from first principles, various possible modelling choices and related concepts are examined. The end resultis a useful reference for students and practitioners wishing to learn more about a centrally important financial-management device.

The book offers a detailed, robust, and consistent framework for the joint consideration of portfolio exposure, risk, and performance across a wide range of underlying fixed-income instruments and risk factors. Through extensive use of practical examples, the author also highlights the necessary technical tools and the common pitfalls that arise when working in this area. Finally, the book discusses tools for testing the reasonableness of the key analytics to help build and maintain confidence for using these techniques in day-to-day decision making. This will be of keen interest to risk managers, analysts and asset managers responsible for fixed-income portfolios.