0263 - Learning from the London Whale with Denis McCarthy

0263 - Learning from the London Whale with Denis McCarthy

From Design Talk (dot IE) by Allen Higgins

November 4, 2025 · 37 min · Season 13 · Episode 263

About this episode

Denis McCarthy discusses financial risk modelling and the cultural aspects of managing risk in organizations.

Welcome to the Economics and Finance class. Our hosts are Daksh Wadhwa and Peter Barrett.  Today, we are very pleased to welcome Denis McCarthy, Head of Financial Risk Model Development at AIB. Thank you for coming in to speak to us today. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your journey into financial risk modelling? ·       What does a day in the week look like on your team? [for a finance/economist, quant analyst, programmer] ·       How can a large organisation manage end-user tools like Excel? [policy, practices, systems management…] ·       Much of the focus is on the technical characteristics and the actions of individuals but not so much on organisational cultural. How can we address the organisational culture angle? [for example, grow and protect a culture of dissent? What might that look like?] ·       What about review processes and how to avoid undue influence from one or other actors? [maybe relate to audit trails, version control] ·       Are our models becoming too complex? [to…

People in this episode

Hosts: Daksh Wadhwa, Peter Barrett

Guest: Denis McCarthy

Topics covered

  • financial risk modelling
  • organisational culture
  • end-user tools
  • sentiment analysis
  • systemic risk

Keywords

  • financial risk
  • Excel management
  • organisational culture
  • sentiment analysis
  • systemic risk

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: AIB

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