Republic of Korea

Past experience with financial crises places systemic risk oversight at the core of Korea’s approach to the financial system. The Korean authorities have amassed over a decade of experience with macroprudential policies. They have put in place rigorous and sophisticated processes for risk monitoring. They publish first-rate analysis. And they have actively developed measures to mitigate risks to the financial system—notably from FX exposures, and from household indebtedness—as circumstances have changed. But their system has evolved to be highly complex, which poses challenges for coordination, communication, and transparency; moreover, their toolkit needs to be extended. These areas should be the focus of efforts to strengthen the policy framework.

MAKING SENSE OF RISK MANAGEMENT AS A (DIS)COMFORT-INDUCING PRACTICE

This study aims to enhance our understanding of the practice of risk management, and specifically how corporate boards fulfill their responsibilities regarding risk oversight. We draw on a theoretical perspective centered on (dis)comfort and 25 interviews with corporate board members and risk management consultants in Canada to present a view of risk management as a set of activities characterized by tension between actions that engender the feeling of discomfort, and a quest for comfort and reassurance. Our findings provide insights that show how, alongside the functionalist underpinnings, comfort-seeking represents a pervasive imperative that profoundly shapes risk management in action.

Board Risk Oversight and Corporate Tax-Planning Practices

Risk oversight by the board of directors is a key component of a firm's enterprise risk management framework, and recently, boards have paid more attention to their firm's tax-planning activities. In this study, we use a hand-collected sample of proxy statement disclosures about the board's role in risk oversight and provide evidence that risk oversight is negatively associated with both tax uncertainty and overall tax burdens. We find that risk oversight is most strongly associated with positions that yield permanent tax benefits and also with less risky tax-planning activities. Overall, the evidence suggests that board risk oversight is associated with more effective tax-planning practices.

United States

The heterogeneity of the United States (U.S.) financial markets and complex regulatory and supervisory institutional setup in the United States underscore the importance of enhancing systemic risk oversight and building effective macroprudential tools. An effective framework would encompass identification and prioritization of system-wide risks and vulnerabilities to spur timely policy action. Structures that ensure interagency sharing of information, identify possible emerging regulatory gaps, obtain a good overview of systemic risks, and develop a cooperative framework to address identified threats to financial stability would be necessary components of such a framework. This Technical Note reviews those processes in the United States, as well as examining the issues of systemic liquidity.

Canada

This Technical Note provides a summary of the review of systemic risk oversight arrangements and macroprudential policy issues in Canada. The paper discusses the existing systemic risk oversight arrangements and potential challenges, and then presents steps that can be taken to modernize the framework to ensure its effectiveness going forward. The paper focuses on systemic risk surveillance, including the current approaches and existing challenges such as data gaps and coordination. It also covers macroprudential policy issues, including the toolkit, the current policy stance and overall policy effectiveness. The review recommends that steps can be taken to improve the current system with a more formalized arrangement for systemic risk oversight. A single body in charge of systemic risk oversight would be the first-best option. Over time, the authorities should review whether systemic risk oversight under the Heads of Agencies Committee leadership with no statutory mandate is adequate. Macroprudential policy at the federal level has been effective; however, better coordination is essential given multiple provincial authorities’ ownership of prudential tools.