Simon Wills, RMA’s New Director, to serve as the First Executive Director of ORX.
Philadelphia, PA (September 20, 2005)—The Operational Riskdata eXchange Association (ORX) and the Risk Management Association (RMA) today announced an agreement whereby Simon Wills, RMA’s new director, based in Europe and focusing on operational risk, will serve as the first executive director of ORX. Under this agreement, RMA will provide ORX with general management, sales and marketing, and related services.
“The appointment of Simon Wills marks a significant step in the evolution of ORX and the next stage in the growth of the association,” said Joe Sabatini, ORX chair and Managing Director, J.P. Morgan Chase. “We are delighted to have Simon as our first executive director, and we are looking forward to working with RMA. Having spent the last four years developing our processes, standards, and structures, the association is now poised for an expansion in value and membership. Simon is absolutely the right person to lead this effort.”
RMA President and CEO Maurice H. Hartigan II said, “RMA is committed to helping ORX achieve its mission. Throughout our 91-year history we have served the needs of our institutional members, currently numbering 3,000. We hope that our involvement with ORX will help the global industry realize major synergies between our Key Risk Indicators Initiative and ORX’s path-breaking work on loss data.”
Charles Taylor, director of operational risk at RMA in Philadelphia, said, “Simon is a recognized authority in the industry and brings to us and ORX a deep knowledge of European public policy and global financial services practice.”
Previously, Wills was a director of the British Bankers’ Association (BBA), where he led the representation of the British banking industry on the reform of the Basel Capital Accord and other changes in the regulatory framework. While at the BBA, Wills chaired the European Banking Federation Basel Working Group.
Wills said, “I’m hugely looking forward to working with and growing the association.
A great amount of work has been invested in ORX that can now bear fruit, to the benefit of the whole financial services industry.”
About ORX
ORX is a three-year-old Swiss-based, not-for-profit forum for the exchange of operational-risk-related loss information. ORX now has 18 of the largest international banks in the world as its members. They make regular anonymized submissions to the association, creating a pool of external loss data for each of them to use for benchmarking and capital estimation. ORX plans to expand its membership and its services in the years ahead. Contact Executive Director Simon Wills at swills@rmahq.org. Visit ORX on the Web at: http://www.orx.org/
About RMA
Founded in 1914, the Risk Management Association is a nonprofit, member-driven professional association whose sole purpose is to advance the use of sound risk principles in the financial services industry. RMA promotes an enterprise approach to risk management that focuses on credit risk, market risk, and operational risk.
Headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, RMA has 3,000 institutional members that include banks of all sizes as well as nonbank financial institutions. They are represented in the association by 16,000 risk management professionals who are chapter members in financial centers throughout North America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific. Visit RMA on the Web at www.rmahq.org.
Contact:
Kathleen M. Beans
RMA PR Manager
215-446-4095
kbeans@rmahq.org