As global leaders and business leaders convene in Glasgow for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), Maryland Smith’s Clifford Rossi will be watching the headlines.

A combination of factors including the current corporate tax rate makes pharmaceutical production in the United States more attractive now than investing in either China or India. And adopting advanced technologies such as Continuous Manufacturing (CM) further positions the United States to recapture a prominent position in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

The Center for Financial Policy (CFP) at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and Deloitte have jointly developed a new risk management training program they will deliver to government financial professionals beginning on Jan. 11, 2022. The certificate program, called the Maryland Smith Federal Risk Academy, will provide thought leadership, training, and special events to federal employees engaged in credit, banking, loans, grants, insurance and other market activities.

Financial institutions should be accounting for climate change, but risk models currently are insufficient for regulators to mandate climate stress testing or capital requirements, Maryland Smith’s Clifford Rossi said this week, speaking to the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions in the U.S. House of Representatives.

What’s ahead for mortgage rates? There will be movement, says Maryland Smith’s Clifford Rossi, the question is: How much? Rossi says he expects the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate to remain low by historical standards, but not as low as it is now. He says the 30-year mortgage rate is likely to rise to 3.5-3.6% by year-end, from the current 2.7%. The 15-year mortgage rate, he says, could also rise to 2.5-2.6%, from the current 2.1%.

In their seven-week experiential learning projects, master’s of quantitative finance students are given a task that realistically would take many months to accomplish. That’s intentional, says Maryland Smith’s Clifford Rossi. In academics as in life, the most arduous challenges are often the ones that teach us the most.

A recent $500 million “clerical error” at Citigroup exposes an inherent weakness in big banks that provides lessons to be learned.

The pandemic has changed so much about the way we live and work. And some of those changes are here to stay.

How regulators can better understand the risks facing the financial and mortgage industry.