Global Risk Institute is a preeminent source of ideas on the management of emerging risks and trends for financial services organizations
14 January 2021 | Macro-economic Risk
The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique setting in which to evaluate the importance of a country’s fiscal capacity in explaining the relation between economic growth shocks and sovereign default risk. For a sample of 30 developed countries, we find a positive and significant sensitivity of sovereign default risk to the intensity of the virus’ spread for fiscally constrained governments. Supporting the fiscal channel, we confirm the results for Eurozone countries and U.S. states, for which monetary policy can be held constant. Our analysis suggests that financial markets penalize sovereigns with low fiscal space, thereby impairing their resilience to external shocks.
16 December 2020 | Geopolitical
This commentary offers some initial thoughts on the election returns and their consequences for political uncertainty. It then reflects on the specific implications of the “Biden Minus Blue Wave” scenario for Canadian financial institutions, as manifest in American domestic policy, U.S.-Canada relations, U.S.-China relations, and the larger U.S. global role.
9 December 2020 | Climate Risk and Sustainable Finance
This report that presents results of a global institutional investor survey focused on understanding the methods to assess physical climate risk, the extent of formal training on physical climate risk received by the Boards of Directors, C-Suite officers and portfolio managers, and the utility of Climate Risk Matrices to aid portfolio managers in investment decisions.
26 November 2020 | National Pension Hub Publications
This project is the first to relate jointly estimated risk and (present-biased) time preferences to actual financial decision making by means of a (non-linear) life-cycle model. On average, pension fund participants show present-biased behavior. Retirees are less present-biased than active participants.
26 November 2020 | National Pension Hub Publications
This research measures preferences and trading behavior during the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis. Marike and her coauthors find that in a crisis, individual investor behaviour becomes more impatient and risk seeking.
25 November 2020 | Operational Resilience
There are a number of approaches under consideration and whether regulators ultimately respond by providing workable globally-compatible guidance is yet to be determined. Regardless, firms need to act now to better protect their clients, themselves and overall market integrity.
19 November 2020 | Climate Risk and Sustainable Finance
The paper discusses the need for a “green” as well as a “transition” taxonomy that will help transform Canada’s economy into a low carbon economy with net-zero GHG emissions by 2050.
18 November 2020 | Climate Risk and Sustainable Finance
This study examines trends in climate-related financial disclosure among 58 financial firms in Canada including banks, pensions, insurance, financial Crowns, and credit unions over three reporting cycles (2017, 2018, 2019). This study assesses progress toward alignment with the TCFD Recommendations, and by extension, provides some insight as to the state of climate risk governance and management among Canadian financial firms.
30 October 2020 | Technology Innovations
The race to develop and adopt global stablecoins (GSC)/central bank digital currencies (CBDC) has the potential to put the stewardship of the global financial system up for grabs.
15 October 2020 | National Pension Hub Publications
In this interim report on forced retirement risk and the link to investment portfolios, Minjoon Lee and his coauthors analyze the latest Canadian data and find that the correlation between stock returns and the chance of involuntary job separation is much stronger during the coronavirus crisis.