Customer Reviews

Credit Risk Management and Basel II

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I am very disappointed with this book.

Being an opt-in bank, we were looking for a good book on credit risk for our Basel II implementation program. This book seemed the most appropriate - the description & table of contents looked good and had one good review. The fact that this was from riskbooks gave us additional assurance.

The book turned out to be a big disappointment:

1. Has no substance or insights and does not discuss the challenges in a Basel II implementation

2. Surpisingly, many of the descriptions/explanations are flawed - the description about linkages of credit risk to macroeconomic factors, a section on willingness to pay, transition risk and law of large numbers (to name a few) were amusing!!

3. Was not coherent at multiple places

Caveat Emptor

Given the detailed treatment given in the Basel II framework to securitisations, it is baffling to find no more than a handful of pages hastily written on the subject !! Big letdown !!

This book is obviously a quick shot. It's bits and pieces taken from various articles and put together in an incoherent manner. Also, the author has chosen to spray the text with graphs, a few surveys and a few formulaes, often irrelevant and seemingly arbitrarily selected.

Given the price and the fact that it's part of the Risk book series, I was looking forward to a good, serious book on the implementation of Credit Risk with emphasis on Basel II. The book however, is very disappointing in many respects. It appears often that the author did pick up some buzz-words and mixed them together in an inconsistent / illogical manner. The concepts presented together often are very confusing or don't make sense at all. Having worked in the industry for over 12 years myself, I strongly advise against this book: no matter whether beginner or expert ... spend your 200 USD on something more useful.

This is a type of book that every practitioner in credit risk managemet should have on its shelf. The style of writting is narrative and very easy to follow. For those who have experience in modeling/scoring this will provide a nice overview and a reminder and perhaps even fill some gaps. I think the real winners are those who are thinking of getting into the field. This is an excellent choice. It will provide you with an appropriate background so that you can actually talk to people and start conducting projects at work. All in all the book is a little gem.
The book is not very technical, the author makes sure one understands the concepts and then I guess can move on to some more serious statistical text.