About RiskLab

General Description

RiskLab is an inter-university research institute, concentrating on precompetitive, applied research in the general area of (integrated) risk management for finance and insurance. The laboratory, founded in 1994 as a virtual research cooperation, was reorganized in 1999 and is now physically located in ETH's main building. RiskLab is presently co-sponsored by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) in Zurich, the Credit Suisse Group, the Swiss Reinsurance Company and UBS AG. Various members of the Department of Mathematics at the ETHZ and the Swiss Banking Institute at the University of Zurich are informally linked to RiskLab. The research carried out at RiskLab combines academic, methodological research with a strong input from and interaction with the industry partners. Besides the research director and two postdocs, several additional researchers and guests are often appointed to RiskLab on the basis of specific projects between industry and academia. RiskLab is open for further institutional partners.

Vision

The aims of RiskLab are:

• Promotion of the scientific competence and methodology in the general area of integrated risk management,
• Promotion of fundamental and precompetitive applied research in strong connection with practitioners,
• Knowledge exchange between academia and the finance industry,
• Promotion of Zurich (and Switzerland in general) as one of the leading centres of excellence regarding the finance business and the corresponding academic education and research.

Budget

The budget of RiskLab consists of a yearly grant towards the appointment of two post-doctoral research fellows plus infrastructure, IT support and rooms from ETHZ as well as a substantial budget towards the support of project oriented, applied research from the finance industry partners (Credit Suisse Group, Swiss Reinsurance Company and UBS AG).

Organisational Structure

• The Supervisory Board (Patronat) currently consists of the Chief Risk Officers of the industry partners and the Vice President for Research of ETHZ.
• The Executive Board currently consists of delegated experts from the industry partners, three professors from ETHZ and the Research Director. One of the professors acts as Director/President of the Executive Board.
• The Research Director, appointed by the Executive Board, runs RiskLab and supervises the research projects in cooperation with experts from the industry partners and Corresponding Members of RiskLab.
• An External Review Team consisting of leading experts from academia and the finance industry evaluates RiskLab in March 2003.

For administrative matters, RiskLab is a competence centre of the Department of Mathematics at the ETHZ.

Research

RiskLab concentrates on precompetitive, applied research in the general area of (integrated) risk management for finance and insurance. It combines academic, methodological research with a strong input from and interaction with the industry partners. The research results are freely available; technical reports and papers are published on RiskLab's web site, papers are also submitted to refereed international journals.

Lists of current research projects and proposals and past research projects are available online.