List of Commonly Conflated Financial Terms

In this blog post we discuss a number of financial terms whose precise meaning is frequently intentionally or unintentionally obscured. As a result those terms may, like a Rorschach Blot, mean different things to different people. Unlike this famous psychological test, ambiguity in weighty financial matters can have adverse consequences.

Reading Time: 13 min.
According to wikipedia Conflation is the merging of two or more sets of information, texts, ideas, opinions, etc., into one, often in error. This may lead to misunderstandings, as the fusion of distinct subjects might obscure analysis of relationships which are emphasized by contrasts. Why does conflation happen in the first place? There are several possible factors which in some contexts may be co-existing and overlapping: gratuitous (over)simplification driven by laziness or habit literacy gaps in either the originator or the receiver of information an objective to frame, mislead or otherwise be economical with the truth In this blog post we discuss a number of interrelated financial terms whose precise meaning is frequently intentionally or unintentionally obscured.
9 Things They Do Not Tell You About Risk Management

9 Things They Do Not Tell You About Risk Management

Risk management means different things to different people. In this post we explore some truths about professional risk management that highlight both the challenges it is facing as a discipline and the significant role it can play towards a sustainable future

Reading Time: 12 min.
9 things they do not tell you about risk management Risks don’t fall from the sky, they are generated by other people Informal Risk Management was practiced by individuals since time immemorial. This is the domain of intuitive decision-making, assessing a situation on the spot and taking immediate action to avoid obvious risks. Over aeons empirical risk management has collected a treasure of heuristics, rules of thumb and colorful Risk Management One-Liners such as: There is never only one cockroach.

Open Risk Mentoring GSOC 2021 Hydra Nextgen API Project

For the Google Summer of Code 2021 season Open Risk is happy to join forces with the Hydra Ecosystem to mentor a student project that aims to build a hypermedia enabled REST service around standardized credit portfolio data

Reading Time: 4 min.
A GSOC 2021 summer project collaboration between Open Risk and the Hydra Ecosystem Summer is underway and for the Google Summer of Code 2021 season Open Risk is happy to join forces with the Hydra Ecosystem. The project aims to guide students to build a hypermedia enabled REST service around standardized credit portfolio data. More specifically the project will build a REST service as backend for a hypothetical banking entity that collects and disseminates credit portfolio data conforming to an established public standard (the EBA NPL templates, see below).
Connecting the Dots: Concentration, diversity, inequality and sparsity in economic networks

Connecting the Dots: Concentration, diversity, inequality and sparsity in economic networks

In this second Open Risk White Paper on "Connecting the Dots" we examine measures of concentration, diversity, inequality and sparsity in the context of economic systems represented as network (graph) structures.

Reading Time: 6 min.
Concentration, diversity, inequality and sparsity in the context of economic networks In this second Open Risk White Paper on Connecting the Dots we examine measures of concentration, diversity, inequality and sparsity in the context of economic systems represented as network (graph) structures. We adopt a stylized description of economies as property graphs and illustrate how relevant concepts can represent in this language. We explore in some detail data types representing economic network data and their statistical nature which is critical in their use in concentration analysis.
9 Ways Graphs Show Up in Data Science

9 Ways Graphs Show Up in Data Science

We explore a variety of distinct uses of graph structures in data science. We review various important graph types and sketch their linkages and relationships. The review provides an operational guide towards a better overall understanding of those powerful tools

Reading Time: 17 min.
Graphs seem to be everywhere in modern data science: Graphs (and the related concept of Networks) have emerged from a relative mathematical and physics niche to an ubiquitous model for describing and interpreting various phenomena. While the scholarly account of how this came about would probably need a dedicated book, there is no doubt that one of the key factors that increased the visibility of the graph concept is the near universal adoption of digital social networks.
Equinox: a Platform for Sustainable Project Finance Risk Management

Equinox: a Platform for Sustainable Project Finance Risk Management

On Earth Day 2021 we are happy to launch Equinox, an open source platform supporting sustainable project finance

Reading Time: 5 min.
Equinox is an open source platform that supports holistic risk management and reporting of Sustainable Finance (Sustainable Portfolio Management). The platform integrates geospatial information with applicable regulatory and industry standards from EBA, PCAF and Equator Principles to provide a holistic view of the footprint of both individual projects and portfolios, in particular of project finance investments. Motivation Sustainability (understood in environmental, economic and social terms) is emerging as an undisputed constraint that will shape future human activity and more specifically how the financial system facilitates and empowers economic life.
Towards the Semantic Description of Machine Learning Models

Towards the Semantic Description of Machine Learning Models

Reading Time: 7 min.
Semantic Web Technologies integrate naturally with the worlds of open data science and open source machine learning, empowering better control and management of the risks and opportunities that come with increased digitization and model use The ongoing and accelerating digitisation of many aspects of social and economic life means the proliferation of data driven/data intermediated decisions and the reliance on quantitative models of various sorts (going under various hashtags such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, data science etc.
Visual Overview of Built-In Python Data Types

Visual Overview of Built-In Python Data Types

We discuss the Python language built-in data types and a visualization that organizes them according to key attributes

Reading Time: 4 min.
Data Types are a fundamental building block of data science Data science is about data, but data are not simple and tame beasts. They have character and attitude, which can cause a lot of friction between them and the data scientist. There is a lot of sweat and tears involved when confronting data, but data scientists can do worse than know how to handle in particular Data Type quirks. Namely, a good fraction of data science involves not modelling data, not transforming data, not even cleaning data but simply goading data around the right containers, providing them with the right stage that fits their character.

Marking Pi Day 2021 With a Raspberry Pi Docker Image for OpenNPL

We celebrate Pi Day 2021 releasing an ARM version of the openNPL platform that is suitable for the Raspberry Pi

Reading Time: 2 min.
Celebrating Pi Day 2021 Pi Day is celebrated every year on March 14th. The reason of course is that the day is denoted in some calendars as (3/14), which evokes of 3.14, the first three digits of “π”. A thin excuse maybe but sufficient for the true believers to join along! The occasion represents an annual opportunity for mathematics and science enthusiasts to recite the infinite charms of Pi, including its irrationality, to talk to friends and family about math and its uses, and, when everything else fails, simply eat pie.
An introduction to Semantic Python

An introduction to Semantic Python

A CrashCourse introduction to semantic data using Python covering a number of frameworks such as rdflib, owlready and pySHACL

Reading Time: 2 min.
Course Content: This CrashCourse is an introduction to semantic data using Python. It covers the following topics: We learn to work with RDF graphs using rdflib We explore the owlready package and OWL ontologies We look into json-ld serialization of RDF/OWL data We try data validation using pySHACL We use throughout a realistic data set based on the Credit Ratings Ontology Who Is This Course For: The course is useful to:
Stress Testing of the Future - A view from 2031

Stress Testing of the Future - A view from 2031

What is the future of stress testing? We speculate on how stress testing might look like in 2031

Reading Time: 13 min.
What is the future of stress testing? To speculate on the future of Stress Testing we need first a basic definition what stress testing is. Broadly speaking, the goal of Stress Testing is to assess how a system would behave under adverse conditions that - while not the most likely outcome with the knowledge of today - are within the realm of the plausible. There are, broadly speaking, two types of stress testing: The Real stress testing version and Hypothetical stress testing version.
Visualization of a Planet in Lockdown

Visualization of a Planet in Lockdown

We visualize global mobility patterns over a full year of pandemic induced lockdowns

Reading Time: 5 min.
Visualizing a year in lockdowns and restricted mobility As we move into February 2021 the world will be experiencing almost a year under pandemic conditions. This has markedly changed behavioral patterns of human mobility across the board. One major difference with previous pandemics is that through the use of a variety of digital technologies and new data collection channels we know have an unprecedented view of those changing mobility patterns.
Non-Performing Loan Ontology

Non-Performing Loan Ontology

The NPL Ontology (NPLO) is a new ontology describing datasets of Non-Perfoming Loan Portfolios.

Reading Time: 4 min.
The Non-Perfoming Loan Ontology The Non-Performing Loan Ontology is a framework that aims to represent and categorize knowledge about non-performing loans using semantic web information technologies. Codenamed NPLO, it codifies the relationship between the various components of a Non-Performing Loan portfolio dataset.(NB: Non-performing loans are bank loans that are 90 days or more past their repayment date or that are unlikely to be repaid, for example if the borrower is facing financial difficulties).
What do people talk about at FOSDEM 2021

What do people talk about at FOSDEM 2021

FOSDEM is the Free and Open Source Software Developers European Meeting.

Reading Time: 3 min.
Introduction: What is FOSDEM? FOSDEM is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized event centered on free and open-source software development (with a geographic focus on the European open source ecosystems / projects). FOSDEM is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and open-source software movement. It aims to enable developers to meet and to promote the awareness and use of free and open-source software. FOSDEM is held annually since 2001, usually during the first weekend of February, at the Université Libre de Bruxelles Solbosch campus in the southeast of Brussels, Belgium.
Taxonomy of Uncertainty

Taxonomy of Uncertainty

We review and synthesize into a taxonomy a number of related concepts and terms describing uncertainty, risk, randomness and model risk

Reading Time: 14 min.
Risk, Randomness, Uncertainty and other Ambiguous Terms Uncertainty versus Risk is a popular discussion topic among risk managers, especially after major risk management disasters. The debate can get really hairy and drift into deep philosophical areas about the nature of knowledge etc. Yet the significance of having an as clear as possible language toolkit around these terms should not be underestimated. Practical risk management typically shuns too deep excursions into the meaning of things, yet that is not quite compatible with the use of sophisticated methods and tools (such as a Risk Model ) that assumes an understanding of the scope and limitations of “knowledge”.
A Global Mobility Index

A Global Mobility Index

We introduce a global mobility index that averages Google mobility data across all available countries (weighting by population) to provide an overall view of how the pandemic has influenced human mobility

Reading Time: 6 min.
Constructing a Global Mobility Index (GMI) In previous posts (here, and here) we introduced new Open Risk Dashboard functionalities that integrate COVID-19 community mobility data (currently focusing on the datasets provided by Google). As a reminder, these reports chart over time human mobility trends collected from mobile geolocation data. The granularity is by geography and across different categories of places / activities such as retail and recreation areas, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential areas.
Is Global Debt Truly Astronomical?

Is Global Debt Truly Astronomical?

Is Global Debt Truly Astronomical?

Reading Time: 11 min.
Is the size of global debt truly “astronomical”? The notion of astronomical numbers and figures is quite frequently seeping in everyday language when large quantities of something are encountered in “normal” life. The strict definition of astronomical is obviously something of, or relating to, astronomy and astronomical observations but in common usage it also denotes something enormously or inconceivably large. This is, of course, because astronomical figures are inconceivably large!
Risk Function Ontology

Risk Function Ontology

The Risk Function Ontology (RFO) is a new ontology describing risk management roles (posts) and functions.

Reading Time: 3 min.
The Risk Function Ontology The Risk Function Ontology is a framework that aims to represent and categorize knowledge about risk management functions using semantic web information technologies. Codenamed RFO codifies the relationship between the various components of a risk management organization. Individuals, teams or even whole departments tasked with risk management exist in some shape or form in most organizations. The ontology allows the definition of risk management roles in more precise terms, which in turn can be used in a variety of contexts: towards better structured actual job descriptions, more accurate description of internal processes and easier inspection of alignement and consistency with risk taxonomies (See also live version and white paper (OpenRiskWP04_061415)
Monte Carlo Simulation of the US Electoral College

Monte Carlo Simulation of the US Electoral College

Using a simplified version of the rules of the US Electoral College system we illustrate how the use of Monte Carlo techniques allows exploring systems that show combinatorial explosion

Reading Time: 9 min.
The role of simulation in risk management and decision support A Simulation is a simplified imitation of a process or system that represents with some fidelity its operation over time. In the context of risk management and decision support simulation can be a very powerful tool as it allows us to assess potential outcomes in a systematic way and explore what-if questions in ways that might otherwise be not feasible. Simulation is used when the underlying model is too complex to yield explicit analytic models (An analytic model is one can be “solved” exactly or with standard numerical methods, for example resulting in a formula).
Federated Credit Systems, Part One: Unbundling the Credit Provision Business Model

Federated Credit Systems, Part One: Unbundling the Credit Provision Business Model

In this Open Risk White Paper, the first in a series of three, we introduce and explore the concept of federated credit systems as a potentially interesting domain for the application of federated analysis and federated learning.

Reading Time: 1 min.
Federated Credit Systems, Part I: Unbundling the Credit Provision Business Model: As an architectural design and information technology approach, federation has received increased attention in domains such as the medical sector (under the name federated analysis), in official statistics (under the name trusted data) and in mass computing devices (smartphones), under the name federated learning. In this (the first of series of three) white paper, we introduce and explore the concept of federated credit systems.