2025 January E-Newsletter

 

A Message from our Executive Director

Dear Members,

Welcome to another year of events, networking, and expert risk advice.

RMA Australia continues to be a vital organisation dedicated to advancing the profession of risk management in Australia.

Our member services have expanded significantly over the past few years in response to the changing nature of the workforce, global risk trends and membership growth and will continue to adapt to meet your needs in 2025.

Being an RMA Australia member and participating in our events, forums, and group mentoring activities, will give you a distinct advantage in your risk management career.

In 2024, we successfully convened 23 events/webinars with 6000 + attendees with an overall satisfaction rating of 4.5/5* or higher.

Our events program for 2025 is firming up, covering a wide range of critical topics, including:

• Economic updates
• Enterprise risk
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Cyber risk
• Climate risk
• Risk fundamentals

Our first webinar for the year is on “Exploring the Future of Credit”, hosted by PwC. Click here to register.

Please contact [email protected] if you have any specific topics that you would like to be considered as part of the 2025 events program.

We look forward to engaging with you and supporting you in your professional risk journey in 2025.

Richard Gilbert

Executive Director, RMA Australia

REGISTER HERE

 

Meet our Speakers – Exploring the future of Credit

Tamara Bryden, Managing Director, Business Lending, Westpac

Tamara has over 20 years’ experience in the financial services sector, specialising in business banking. Her expertise span risk, strategy, operations, and sales including relationship management.

She is a passionate customer advocate and authentic leader, with success leading large, high performing teams to deliver transformational change and sustainable growth. She is experienced in influencing and negotiating with all stakeholders to drive strategic outcomes.

Tamara is the Managing Director for Business Lending at Westpac Group. In this role, Tamara is responsible for leading and delivering the end-to-end business lending journey for customers (including lending to small businesses, SMEs and Commercial businesses). This requires collaboration with teams across the business to deliver on customer, financial, and risk performance objectives. Tamara is passionate about cutting through complexity to find simple solutions that exceed customer expectations.

Tamara holds an Honours Degree in Business, has completed a MBA, and is well versed in Japanese.

 

Paul Riordan, Executive, Chief Credit & Market Risk Officer, National Australia Bank (NAB)

Mr Riordan leads the Credit & Market Risk team, which is responsible for risk appetite, risk measurement, frameworks and policies, models and analytics, transaction sanctioning and enablement, portfolio management, and oversight and assurance of all credit and market risk portfolios for NAB. Prior to his current role, Mr Riordan was Executive General Manager Enterprise Risk & Chief Credit Officer, with responsibilities also including operational risk, conduct and compliance risk across the Group.

Prior to his appointment to NAB in February 2016, Mr Riordan had been with Commonwealth Bank of Australia in a variety of senior roles. These roles included Head of Global Trading, EGM Global Markets (FICC), EGM Global Finance Solutions, EGM Business Development & Risk Management, and from 2007-2015 Chief Risk Officer, Institutional & Business Banking.

In addition, he served as the Country Treasurer for Bank of America in Australia and the Regional Head of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives, East Asia for UBS.

Mr Riordan is a Director of Financial Services Institute of Australasia (FINSIA).

He is also a former Director of CLS Group Holdings AG and CLS Bank International (CLS) between 2009-2018, during which he chaired the Nominating & Governance Committee and was also a member of the Chairman’s Committee and Risk Management Committee. Mr. Riordan is also a former Chairman & Board Member of the Australian Financial Markets Association (AFMA).

Mr Riordan received a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Adelaide and is a graduate of the Advanced Management Programme at Wharton. He is a member of FINSIA, CPA Australia, Australian Corporate Treasurers Association (ACTA), and the Risk Management Association.

 

Nina Larkin, Partner, Banking Actuary, PwC Australia

Nina Larkin is an Actuarial Partner with extensive experience in the financial services industry. Her work involves financial risk management, ensuring compliance with regulatory and accounting standards for credit impairment provisions, regulatory capital, liquidity, and stress testing. She is knowledgeable in risk management frameworks, including risk appetite and model governance.

Nina has led projects involving cross-functional teams, managed stakeholder engagement, and provided technical mentoring. She uses quantitative analysis to support decision-making.

Her experience includes actuarial support for audits of credit risk provisions, developing and validating credit risk models, and designing stress testing frameworks.

She has been involved in product systems testing, governance reviews, and mergers and acquisitions.

Nina holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Actuarial Studies and Finance from UNSW and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Austral

 

Upcoming Events

10 February (4 – 5pm AEDT) WEBINAR Exploring the future of Credit hosted by PwC