James Lam had just been hired by a new financial division of GE Capital when he walked into his boss’s office with a problem: He was ordering business cards and had no idea what to put on them. Since his position didn’t really exist, it also didn’t have a title, so he was given permission to invent one. He called himself a chief risk officer.
Thirty years later, as he followed the spectacular implosion of Silicon Valley Bank, there were few people more qualified than Mr. Lam to ask two simple questions.
- Where was the chief risk officer?
- Wait, the bank didn’t have a chief risk officer?
“Any strong chief risk officer could have and should have prevented what happened at Silicon Valley Bank,” he said.
Source: Chief Risk Officer: The Most Thankless Job in Banking – WSJ
