Most Recent PRMIA 8010 Exam Dumps

In statistics, which is relevant to risk management, a distinction is often drawn between 'frequentists' and 'Bayesians'. Frequentists rely upon data to draw conclusions as to probabilities. Bayesians consider conditional probabilities, ie, take into account what things are already known, and inject sometimes subjective a-priori probabilities into the calculations. Statement I describes Bayesians, and not frequentists. In reality however, the difference is merely academic. Risk managers use whichever technique best applies to the given situation without making it about ideology.

The difference between 'Knightian uncertainty' and 'Risk' is similarly academic. Knightian uncertainty refers to risk that cannot be measured or calculated. 'Risk' on the other hand refers to things for which past data exists and calculations of exposure can be made. To give an example in the context of the financial world, the risk from a pandemic creating systemic failures from a failure of payment and settlement systems and the like is 'Knightian uncertainty', but the market risk from equity price movements can be modeled (albeit with limitations) and is calculable. Statement II is therefore correct.

Once a risk is identified, it can be mitigated, accepted, avoided or eliminated, or transferred by way of insurance. Therefore statement III is correct.

Confidence accounting is a conceptual idea that suggests that accounting statements make reference to ranges as opposed to point estimates in financial statements. For example, instead of saying that the pension obligation is $xx million, the company should say the pension obligation is in a range of $xx m - $yy m with a certain confidence level. Statement IV is therefore inaccurate.

In a bankruptcy, equity ranks last. Preferred equity is one level above equity. Senior debt gets paid out first compared to junior debt, and secured debt is paid out first to the extent of the asset securing it (after which it counts as unsecured debt). Accounts payable and other short term liabilities are treated like unsecured creditors. Debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing ranks higher than any other asset as it is financing secured after the bankruptcy to continue the business.

Based on the above, statement I does not represent a correct ordering of seniority as equity is paid last. Similarly, DIP financing receives higher priority than even secured debt, and therefore statement IV is incorrect. Therefore the only correct statements are II and III and Choice 'a' is the correct answer.

Total expected losses which are average and anticipated are equal to the sum of expected losses in the underlying exposures. Total unexpected losses, which are the excess of worst case losses at a certain confidence level over the expected losses, benefit from the diversification effect and are lower than the sum of unexpected losses of the underlying exposures. Therefore Choice 'c' is the correct answer. The other choices are incorrect.

The Options Theoretic approach to calculating economic capital is a top-down approach that considers the value of capital as being equivalent to a call option with a strike price equal to the notional value of the debt - ie, the shareholders have a call option on the assets of the firm which they can acquire by paying the debt holders a value equal to their notional claim (ie the face value of the debt). Therefore Choice 'a' is the correct answer and the other choices are incorrect.

High frequency and low severity risks, for example the risks of fraud losses for a credit card issuer, may have high expected losses, but low unexpected losses. In other words, we can generally expect these losses to stay within a small expected and known range. The capital requirement will be the worst case losses at a given confidence level less expected losses, and in such cases this can be expected to be low.

On the other hand, medium severity medium frequency risks, such as the risks of unexpected legal claims, 'fat-finger' trading errors, will have low expected losses but a high level of unexpected losses. Thus the capital requirement for such risks will be high.

It is also worthwhile mentioning high severity and low frequency risks - for example a rogue trader circumventing all controls and bringing the bank down, or a terrorist strike or natural disaster creating other losses - will probably have zero expected losses & high unexpected losses but only at very high levels of confidence. In other words, operational risk capital is unlikely to provide for such events and these would lie in the part of the tail that is not covered by most levels of confidence when calculating operational risk capital.

Note that risk capital is required for only unexpected losses as expected losses are to be borne by P&L reserves. Therefore the operational risk capital requirements for a low severity high frequency risk is likely to be low when compared to other risks that are lower frequency but higher severity.

Thus Choice 'c' is the correct answer.