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CONSISTENCY OF RISK REPORTING IN FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRMS
Author:
School of Economics and Finance
澳大利亚论文 |
https://www.51lunwen.org/australia/ |
University of Western Sydney
CONSISTENCY OF RISK REPORTING IN FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRMS
ABSTRACT
While there have been substantial developments in financial reporting over many years,the reporting of risk in statutory reports is still very much in its infancy. This comes at no surprise given risk is multidimensional and can be measured in many ways. In thefinancial services sector (FSS), where risk-taking is the fundamental business, the
industry standard for risk disclosure is ‘Value at Risk’ (VaR). This applies to a smallproportion of FSS risk – this being market risk in trading activities. Although operationalrisk has been at the core of the collapse of a number of financial services firms overrecent years, there are no formal accounting standard for operational risk. Further, the
Basel Committee’s requirements on operational risk disclosures (Pillar3) are qualitative.This paper examines the nature of current operational risk disclosures by internationalbanks, the consistency of disclosures, and their usefulness. The information is takenfrom the 2004 and 2005 annual reports of fifty-seven financial institutions. We find thatthe quantity and quality of operational risk disclosures vary significantly acrossinstitutions. The disclosures are predominantly descriptive and of qualitative nature - inorder to be useful banks need to supplement their current disclosures with quantitativeinformation. Due to the lack of consistency and the vagueness of disclosures it is not
possible for external parties at this to compare the operational risk levels of banks.
Keywords: operational risk; disclosure; financial reporting; Basel Committee on Banking
Supervision
1 INTRODUCTION
While there have been substantial developments in financial reporting over many years,the reporting of risk in statutory reports is still very much in its infancy. This comes at nosurprise given risk is multidimensional and can be measured in many ways. There havebeen some general initiatives such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US, the COSO
project on fraudulent financial reporting, the development and implementation ofInternational Financial Reporting Standards, the EU’s Solvency II project for insurancecompanies, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s capital
guidelines forfinancial institutions.
In the financial services sector (FSS), where risk-taking is the fundamental business, the
industry standard for risk disclosure is ‘Value at Risk’ (VaR)1. This applies to a small
proportion of FSS risk – this being market risk in trading activities. From the perspectiveof ratings agencies, credit ratings are based on a prudential solvency standard whichalso has at its underpinnings a VaR-
methodology for measuring risk. The problem withsuch an approach is the assumption of a neut
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