Mitigating Risk with an Eye Toward Innovation

An interview with Andrew Gray, DTCC Group Chief Risk Officer | Aug 10, 2020

Evolving the company’s risk management framework to respond, recover, and thrive in new environments is one tenet of Andrew Gray’s strategic vision; embedding intelligent resilience into the company’s operations is another.

Resilience is built into the DNA of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). The post-trade infrastructure company was formed in partnership with the industry it serves to provide stability and efficiency to the global capital markets. DTCC’s primary function is risk management, says Andrew Gray, the company’s group chief risk officer.

He explains that DTCC’s role is to identify, measure, monitor, and control risks that permeate securities transactions-including credit, market, liquidity, systemic, and operational risk. To do that, Gray says it is critical that DTCC, which operates globally, continuously rethinks how it, and the industry, address emerging threats.

In a conversation with Larry Rosenberg, partner and U.S. Capital Markets Audit & Assurance leader, Deloitte & Touche LLP, Gray discusses the company’s role as a Systemically Important Financial Markets Utility, how technology and data analytics support resiliency, and the company’s strategy for addressing COVID-19-related disruption, among other issues.

Larry Rosenberg: As a critical pillar of the financial market infrastructure, DTCC defines resilience as a core competency. Why is it so important to the company and how does it fit into the firm’s overall strategic objectives?

Gray: Resilience is fundamental to our ability to serve the marketplace and protect the integrity and stability of the global financial system. As the centralized clearinghouse for the U.S. capital markets, we must clear and settle all transactions in our pipeline every day so the markets can open and trade the following morning. If you look back at the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Superstorm Sandy and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, we continued processing trading activity throughout each crisis while maintaining access to key business services for our clients. While the markets were experiencing extreme volatility during each of those periods, we were working behind the scenes with regulators and other market participants providing stability that is essential for the markets to continue functioning efficiently.

Click here to continue reading the full interview in The Wall St. Journal.

Originally published at https://www.dtcc.com on August 11, 2020.