Stress Testing: Pushing the Limits with Ajay Bhatt

On November 15th, 2016 Zicklin Forensic Accounting Association held an event that deviated from the accounting field, therefore attracting students also from other business fields, such as finance. Ajay Bhatt, the guest speaker from Credit Suisse gave a very informative presentation on Stress Testing and on his experience of implementing Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR).

CCAR is Federal Reserve regulation which targets large banks and requires performance of periodical Stress Testing in order to measure how much money a financial institution could lose in extreme or stressed market environments. To meet all the requirements of CCAR regulations, however, financial institutions lean heavily on their internal audit departments.

Ajay, who is an expert of CCAR, walked the attendees through the steps of Stress Testing process, including coming up with the scenarios, narrative and variables to test; and building a model and submitting it for review and approval to Federal Reserve. The process which could take from weeks to months is hard to execute and requires a lot of professional judgment and knowledge of fields such as economics, math, and finance. Ajay, who holds a degree in Electrical Engineering, stumbled into the field of risk by working on a project that intrigued him enough to change his career path to one in which he could utilize his love for solving problems.

By having an aptitude and willingness to learn in addition to working hard, Ajay found the job that he loves and he claims that containing these valuable qualities will help students in reaching their goals as well.

By Justyna Maj, edited by Maisie Gao