Tag: Risk

The WealthStack Podcast: Demystifying Risk Management with Rick Bookstaber and Govinda Quish

The WealthStack Podcast: Demystifying Risk Management with Rick Bookstaber and Govinda Quish

The risk landscape is rapidly evolving, and wealth managers are seeking out new solutions to measure and manage risk for their clients’ investment portfolios. This area of financial planning goes well beyond a risk tolerance number, but, is technology keeping up? 

In this episode, Shannon Rosic, director of WealthStack Content and Solutions, speaks with risk management expert, Rick Bookstaber and Govinda Quish, CEO and Co-Founder of Fabric, about how they differentiate themselves from other risk management tools out on the market.

Shannon, Rick and Govinda discuss:

  • Why financial advisors have evolved into a personal risk advisor
  • How the commoditization of data has changed the risk management landscape
  • The material risks that will impact individuals in 2023 and beyond 
  • How the platform provides the wealth management industry with institution-level risk management

Connect with Shannon Rosic:

Connect with the Guests:

About Our Guests:

Rick is a noted expert in financial risk management, and is the author of The End of Theory (Princeton, 2017), and A Demon of Our Own Design (Wiley, 2007).

He has served in chief risk officer roles at Salomon, Morgan Stanley, Moore Capital, and Bridgewater Associates. From 2009 to 2015 he served at the SEC and the U.S. Treasury, drafting the Volcker Rule and modeling risk for the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Most recently he was the chief risk officer in the University of California Office of the CIO for the university’s $170 billion pension and endowment funds.

His roles have placed him at the center of financial crises of the last three decades – working with portfolio insurance during the 1987 Crash while at Morgan Stanley, overseeing risk at Salomon during the 1998 failure of Long-Term Capital Management (dubbed “Salomon North”), and with the aftermath of the 2008 Crisis while in the regulatory sphere.

A black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Rick can be found training at the Renzo Gracie Academy in his free time.

Rick received a Ph.D. in economics from MIT.

Govinda Quish is the CEO and Co-Founder of Fabric (www.fabricrisk.com), a software company that powers portfolio design, customization and analytics, creating client value at scale for investment advisors.

Govinda served as an Investment Fellow and Senior Risk Management Professional at the University of California pension and endowment funds.

His career has been focused on risk analysis and portfolio management for global family offices in the U.S., Hong Kong, the UK, and Switzerland.

He has developed risk and portfolio management models for institutional asset managers and family offices such as the Mellon Family Office, SAP Family Office, and Synergy Fund Management.

In 2007, he co-founded Quish & Co, LP, an RIA in Boulder, CO. In 2014 he founded Quish & CO AG, an asset manager in Zurich, Switzerland serving the interests of European families.

Govinda loves to play polo, you can find him with his horses.

He received a Masters in Religious Studies from Naropa University.



Rick Bookstaber and Dr. Ashby Monk: The Evolution of Financial Advisors as Risk Managers

Rick Bookstaber and Dr. Ashby Monk: The Evolution of Financial Advisors as Risk Managers

As more individuals enter and approach retirement, the role of a financial advisor is changing rapidly. An increasing number of clients need their advisors to act as “personal risk managers” and focus on downside protection and stability, vs. growth and outperformance. 

To learn more about this evolution, Mark Bruno, Managing Director of Wealth Management at Informa, is joined by Rick Bookstaber, Co-Founder and Head of Risk at Fabric, and Dr. Ashby Monk, Executive and Research Director at Stanford University, to discuss the importance of understanding risk and the advisor’s role as risk manager for clients. 

Listen in as Mark, Rick and Dr. Ashby discuss:

  • The most prominent market, economic and planning risks in today’s environment
  • What financial advisors can learn from institutional investors about risk management
  • How advisors should balance long-term risks with short-term risks 
  • How risk management technology has evolved – specifically, the risk management tools and resources available to financial advisors.

Connect with Mark Bruno:

Connect with Rick Bookstaber:

Connect with Dr. Ashby Monk:

About Our Guests:

Rick Bookstaber has worked in risk management with chief risk officer roles on both the buy-side at Moore Capital and Bridgewater, and on the sell-side at Morgan Stanley and Salomon. From 2009 to 2015 he served in the public sector at the SEC and the U.S. Treasury, drafting the Volcker Rule, building out the risk management structure for the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and developing an agent-based model to assess financial vulnerabilities.

Dr. Ashby Monk is the Executive and Research Director of the Stanford Global Projects Center. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the University of Oxford and a Senior Advisor to the Chief Investment Officer of the University of California. Dr. Monk has a strong track record of academic and industry publications. His research and writing have been featured in The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Institutional Investor, Reuters, Forbes, and on National Public Radio among a variety of other media.