Risk Management Executive

CREDIT | COMPLIANCE | FRAUD | AQUISTIONS

I help organizations navigate complex global risk and regulatory landscapes in the payments industry by creating innovative global solutions that balance risk and reward based on organizational risk appetite.

RISK MANAGEMENT DECISION FRAMEWORKS

Develop and deploy structured frameworks to ensure identification, assessment and management of risks in compliance with organizational risk appetite and regulatory obligations.

INTEGRATION OF CORPORATE AQUISITIONS

Maximize the value of corporate acquisitions through:

Pre-transaction assessment and improvement of target integration readiness and/or;

Post-transaction development and execution of integration plans.

POLICY & PROCESS DEVELOPMENT

Lead the development of robust policies, processes, metrics and capabilities to deliver effective, consistent, efficient and verifiable management of risks inherent in an organization’s business model.

PEOPLE & CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Lead change management by focusing on clarity, inclusiveness and respect to maximize employee engagement and minimize disruption, uncertainty and time to point-of-arrival status.

Case Study I

Building a global settlement guarantee risk management framework

SITUATION

  • Mastercard’s settlement guarantee covers the payment network settlement obligations of issuers and acquirers to each other.

  • Mastercard’s legacy approach for management of exposure due to its settlement guarantee was based on:

    • Customers were assessed solely on financial ratings from major ratings agencies.

    • No collateral required if a customer’s rating was above a standard threshold, and 100% collateralization required otherwise.

    • Customer-level exposure was a factor only for customers from whom 100% collateral coverage was required.

  • Agency ratings could be slow to reflect unexpected changes in customer status or the environment they operated in.

  • 100% collateralization was a major pain point in many customer relationships.

  • Mastercard settlement risk team were process managers rather than risk managers, limiting opportunities and incentives for true ownership of risk management.

  • “Clean-sheet-of-paper” creation of a new exposure risk management framework was initiated.


APPROACH

  • Transformed risk management framework by incorporating risk best practices and governance protocols:

    • Customer-level exposure appetite established for each customer.

    • Collateral requirements based on any overage of actual exposure relative to appetite.

    • Regional risk teams owned ongoing responsibility for refreshing exposure appetites, monitoring exposure against these and updating collateral coverage as required.

  • Broad-scale communication of new approach, underlying rationale and associated benefits to business leadership, account management teams and to impacted customers.

Results

New framework enabled significantly improved visibility of the size and quality of net exposure, both at the customer level and in aggregate at the country, regional and global levels.

Risk management team became true underwriters and owners of exposure appetite and management rather than process operators reviewing agency ratings.

Identified $850M in excess customer collateral held, release of which alleviated a significant pain point in many customer relationships.

Case Study II

Integration of Corporate Acquisitions

SITUATION

  • Acquisition of companies with key talent and capabilities in cybersecurity and fraud detection is a key component of Mastercard’s strategy to ensure the security of its global payment network and to protect customers.

  • In the period from 2017 through 2020 Mastercard closed five acquisitions, with total investment of approximately $1B, in the cybersecurity and fraud detection space.

  • Success of the business strategy relied on seamless integration of these acquisitions to:

    • Retain, utilize and grow talent.

    • Maximize organic and synergistic revenue generation.

    • Align people, processes and technology with Mastercard enterprise standards.


APPROACH

  • Integration planning was a holistic cross-functional approach with tight coordination and alignment across, as well as within, functional dimensions.

  • Regular status updates with executive-level business leadership to ensure full visibility and alignment on risks, opportunities and issue management.

  • Integration team of key leaders from both legacy Mastercard and acquired teams, with core guiding principle that integration had to be “done with, not to” the acquired team.

  • Planning and prioritization decisions based on agreed shared objectives and with line-of-sight on all decisions by all cross-functional leads.

  • High focus on constant communication and change management with the acquired teams based on sharing both the “what” and the “why” for changes.

Results

Business case objectives achieved.

Successful retention of key leaders and talent through the 2-year integration window.

The series of acquisitions was recognized as successful and the leadership team received a 2020 CEO Award. 

Integration approach shared as a best practice in onboarding integration leaders for subsequent integrations.

Case Study III

Restructuring of Global Settlement Guarantee Coverage

SITUATION

The existing Mastercard settlement guarantee was fragmented and did not consistently reflect risk management best practices:

  • Inconsistent coverage across regions due to historical local decisions as to what mix of products and transaction types were guaranteed.

  • A substantial portion of the transaction volume guaranteed was not switched by Mastercard resulting in Mastercard being unable to track or manage the associated exposure within the typical 3-5 day transaction-to-settlement cycle.

  • A significant portion of switched transaction volume in some regions was not guaranteed, creating complexity and confusion for customers as to what the value of the guarantee was for them.

The project objective was to align the scope of the guarantee to all, and only to, transactions switched by Mastercard i.e. only to transaction volume and exposure that could be monitored and managed relative to what the company was comfortable with.


APPROACH

Led cross-functional global effort and obtained buy-in from globally matrixed business leadership to rationalize scope of settlement guarantee. Key components of the work included:

  • Initial and ongoing alignment with executive-level Finance and company leadership on objectives and high-level means.

  • In-depth analytics to identify for regional and sub-regional business leaders the impacts to their markets and customers.

  • Extensive iterative engagement with key business partners to educate them on the rationale for the changes and provision of communications support and speaking points for pre-release engagement with key customers.

  • Delayed deployment timelines for a small number of countries with particularly challenging customer and local regulatory circumstances.

Results

Improved the quality of exposure due to swapping out volume that was not switched and therefore not visible in the immediate term for other volume that was switched and visible.

Reduced global settlement guarantee exposure by $3.4B (8.5%).

Repeatedly cited by the CFO as a major achievement and received a CFO Award.