John Thirlwell has worked in financial services for over 30 years and for the last 15 years has been on the boards of a number of banks and insurance companies as both an executive and non-executive director. He was a Director of the British Bankers’ Association where he was heavily involved in negotiating the current operational risk regulatory framework for banks and founded and chaired the BBA’s Global Operational Loss Database. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Operational Risk. He has written a regular column for Operational Risk and Regulation magazine, articles on risk issues for Risk, The Treasurer, PFI Journal and the Chartered Institute of Bankers. He was the co-author of A Guide to BusinessContinuity Management (2001) (BBA/KPMG), senior reviewer of Operational Risk Handbook (2001-4) (Chartered Institute of Securities & Investment), and has written chapters for Advanced Operational Risk (2002) and Basel Handbook (2003)(Risk Waters).
Tony Blunden is an Executive Director of Chase Cooper, a risk management solutions company that focuses on the financial sector to provide solutions for enterprise risk, operational risk, Sarbanes-Oxley, credit and market risk. He heads its consultancy division. Tony’s journalism includes numerous articles on operational risk issues and related matters for Operational Risk and Compliance,New Banking Frontiers, The Scottish Banker, Complinet. He is the co-author of Risk-Based Compliance (2001) (Butterworths) and has contributed to Mastering Derivatives (First Ed. 1996/Second Ed. 2003/Third Ed. 2006) (FT Prentice Hall), The Euromoney Derivatives and Risk Management Handbook 2001/02 (2001)(Euromoney), Operational Risk: Regulation, Analysis and Management (2002) (FT Prentice Hall)and Managing Business Risk (2003) Kogan Page Limited.