appropriate executive programmes for board members and senior management of financial institutions. i believe rmi can make an impact in enhancing the knowledge and capability of practitioners. finally, i hope rmi can provide a focal point to bring in global thought leaders and practitioners on risk management, through your flagship rmi annual conference. this conference has been a success. this conference will also allow rmi to showcase its contribution. this year ’ s annual conference attracted over 300 local and regional participants, registering an increase in the industry ’ s participation over the previous year. i am optimistic that you can grow this conference into a premier event on risk management in the region and globally. conclusion rmi ’ s growth would not be possible without strong support from the university. i appreciate the efforts of prof tan chorh chuan and prof tan eng chye in championing the growth of rmi. rmi ’ s new facilities is a visible commitment of this support. equally, if not more important, is your support for cross - disciplinary research. just as we remind financial institutions not to manage risks in silos, research efforts are more productive through interdisciplinary collaboration. by encouraging faculty members from different parts of the universities to work together, and with industry professionals, you do much to advance rmi ’ s leadership in financial risk management. i congratulate rmi on the opening of its new facilities and wish prof duan and your colleagues every success. i wish you a fruitful symposium. thank you.

in implementing the new regulatory standards. role of industry participants supervision has to work in concert with effective risk governance in the financial institutions. the boards and senior management of financial institutions must take ownership and responsibility to manage risks. a report issued by the senior supervisors group 2 in march 2008, on observations on risk management practices highlighted many risk management practices that improved the resilience of financial institutions during a crisis. let me highlight three areas. first, effective capital planning. banks need to conduct a thorough and comprehensive assessment of their levels of capital. these have to be “ forward - looking ”, taking into account the nature and level of the bank ’ s risk, not only under “ normal ” business conditions, but also the senior supervisors group comprises senior financial supervisors from seven countries ( united states, canada, france, germany, japan, switzerland, united kingdom ). it is chaired by william l. rutledge from the federal reserve bank of new york. under conditions of stress. the level of capital has an important “ signalling ” effect in a crisis. hence, banks need to develop funding strategies and contingency plans, ahead of crisis, to ensure there is adequate capital to maintain market confidence. a second related area is stress testing. globally, the financial industry has acknowledged that stress testing practices were insufficiently comprehensive or rigorous. robust stress testing helps the financial institution to identify the impact of adverse events and shocks, outside of the normal environment. however, let me caution that the techniques for integrated firm - wide stress testing remain in the early stages of development and need to be further refined. tipping points, correlations between risks, feedback loops, behaviours and interactions of market participants are difficult to anticipate and quantify. new approaches to stress tests are being considered, such as reverse stress testing, which requires a financial institution to identify scenarios of which the impact could threaten its survival. if done well, such an approach can help question assumptions, and uncover hidden risks and interlinkages between risk factors. capital planning and stress testing rely heavily on quantitative techniques to measure risks. the crisis shows the limitations of value - at - risk ( var ) models and other quantitative techniques. going forward, financial practitioners will have to be more critical of the assumptions behind the models, and be more prepared to apply sound judgment and reality checks. mas will, as part of its supervisory review process, continue to engage the banks on their capital planning processes, and to evaluate whether the framework is sufficiently robust and comprehensive. the