Smith Enterprise Risk Consortium

Many Maryland homeowners are increasingly faced with the threat of costly home repairs from extreme weather events. With climate change, these events are becoming more frequent and more intense. And that could mean bigger problems for homeowners – particularly those who don’t have the extra cash to handle repairs.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. SVB was taken over by the FDIC last Friday after depositors, fearing the bank would soon be unable to pay its debts, began withdrawing their money at an alarming rate.  Smith experts Cliff Rossi and Bill Longbrake recently spoke with Progyan Basu, clinical professor of Accounting and Information Assurance, about the impact of this failure on the banking industry and the economy as a whole.

Health safety for residents following the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, has been a top concern. Has it really been safe enough to return – both for the short- and long-term?

The Federal Reserve Board has engaged six of the biggest U.S. banks in a pilot Climate Scenario Analysis (CSA) to assess and “advance the ability of supervisors and banks to analyze and manage emerging climate-related financial risks.”

FTX postmortems have included Axios describing the cryptocurrency exchange as a “house of cards” comparable to Enron, Theranos, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Madoff Investment Securities. Plus, Moody’s writes the collapse “will radically transform the crypto ecosystem, further shaking trust and raising doubts around its ongoing prospects.”

Hurricane Ian is now a tropical storm, but estimates for the storm’s Florida landfall included a million-plus homes at risk for damage, with overall damages and losses expected to top $67 billion, according to Bloomberg.

The Federal Reserve’s bank stress test is “capricious” and “arbitrary.” . . . “It’s inconsistent. It’s not transparent. It’s too volatile.” These descriptors came late last week from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon during his bank’s quarterly earnings call. It was a response to results of the latest, annual stress test – the Fed’s response to the 2008 financial crisis to help ensure that large, systemically important banks have sufficient capital buffers to withstand future crises.

The longstanding ‘safe and effective’ regulatory approach to assure Americans their drug products meet a high standard of quality remains effective. However, the pharmaceutical industry needs an additional apparatus – a quality rating system – to address recent supply shortages that are attributable to deficiencies in manufacturing practices, says Maryland Smith’s Clifford Rossi, a risk management expert. Think CMNS nursing home ratings and CARFAX® car history reports, he adds.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently proposed updated rules for public companies to report the climate-related impact of their businesses to the federal government and their shareholders. While the commission collects public comments on the proposal up to June 17, the University of Maryland has crafted a Climate Finance and Risk Management Bootcamp (June 23 and 30) geared to mid-career and senior professionals across industries, who increasingly weigh climate-change factors into business decisions and financial disclosures.