susan schmidt bies : a supervisory perspective on enterprise risk management remarks by ms susan schmidt bies, member of the board of governors of the us federal reserve system, at the american bankers association annual convention, phoenix, arizona, 17 october 2006. * * * good morning. it is always an honor to address the american bankers association. having been a banker, i find it particularly interesting to address this group in my current role as supervisor and central banker. i hope my past private sector experience helps provide a useful perspective on our current regulatory and supervisory policies. today i would like to focus on the topic of enterprise risk management. i am quite pleased to see more and more sessions at conferences devoted to risk management, analyzing its different facets and exploring ways to tailor it to specific institutions and situations. indeed, there is a growing understanding that good risk management should be an integral part of running any type of business. a key theme i would like to highlight today is that all banking institutions should seek ways to improve risk management, but that the methods to improve risk management should depend on the size and sophistication of the institution. in my remarks i will look at some recent cases in which we believe bankers and supervisors have learned some key lessons about enterprise risk management, or erm. these lessons demonstrate how good risk management increases business efficiency and profitability. but before i start discussing particular examples, i want to take a step back and give you my thoughts on erm generally. general thoughts on enterprise risk management the financial services industry continues to evolve to meet the challenges posed by emerging technologies and business processes, new financial instruments, the growing scale and scope of financial institutions, and changing regulatory frameworks. a successful erm process can help an organization meet many of these challenges by providing a framework for managers to explicitly consider how risk exposures are changing, determine the amount of risk they are willing to accept, and ensure they have the appropriate risk mitigants and controls in place to limit risk to targeted levels. of course, erm is a fairly broad topic that can mean different things to different people. for our purposes here today, i will define erm as a process that enables management to effectively deal with uncertainty and associated risk and opportunity, enhancing the capacity to build stakeholder value. borrowing from erm literature, i would say that erm includes • aligning the entity's risk appetite and strategies, • enhancing the rigor of the entity's risk - response decisions, • reducing

janet l yellen : the bureau of labor statistics – a trusted us agency ( brief remarks ) speech by ms janet l yellen, chair of the board of governors of the federal reserve system, at the induction of carroll d. wright and janet l. norwood into the department of labor ’ s hall of honor, us department of labor, washington dc, 20 october 2015. * * * we are here to honor two exceptional public servants and the great institution they helped build. let ’ s consider for a moment why the bureau of labor statistics ( bls ) has succeeded and how carroll wright and janet norwood contributed to that success. in 1884, a time of great strife and mistrust between management and labor, the federal government created an agency with the mission of providing detailed and objective information on american workers. that task fell to carroll wright, who had won the confidence of workers and management as chief of the massachusetts bureau of labor statistics in the years after that state became the first to legalize labor unions. at that point, before the united states itself had recognized such rights and before the federal government could agree on labor standards, the public needed an unimpeachable assessment of the conditions faced by workers. under carroll wright, what was then called the bureau of labor investigated major labor disputes and issued reports that shaped public opinion and were the basis for executive action and legislation. he initiated the collection of data on hours, wages, and prices and was responsible for many important advances that successively improved the reliability of these data. the respect for the thoroughness and objectivity of the research that wright oversaw led to the dismantling of damaging trade barriers in the 1890s and later raised public awareness about the deplorable conditions faced by women in the workplace. in the u. s. constitution, there is not a requirement that government statistics be accurate and free of political influence or bias. carroll wright recognized that this simple, powerful idea could help build public confidence for the government ’ s effort to reduce conflicts between management and workers and move our nation forward. he and others are responsible for a fundamental feature of our democracy that is now often taken for granted – the public ’ s expectation and insistence that information provided by the government can be trusted. to carroll wright ’ s descendants, one of whom is with us today, thank you, on his behalf, for this valuable contribution. this legacy lives on in the agency carroll wright founded, and few of his successors did as much to advance this principle as janet