Understanding, managing, and mitigating business risk in 2021

Richard J. Buczynski, Ph.D.

Senior Vice President, Chief Economist and Chief Financial Risk Architect
IBISWorld, Inc.
www.ibisworld.com

Dr. Richard Buczynski is the executive responsible for IBISWorld’s commercial banking, financial and risk rating practice. Rick helps manage the growth of IBISWorld’s business in this space and assisted the Company’s efforts to set-up operations in America in 2003. He has 40-plus years of experience dealing with Global 500 corporations, traveling millions of miles internationally while conducting business in dozens of countries.

Rick is currently responsible for applying IBISWorld’s Industry Risk Ratings within the portfolio analytics functions of both major financial institutions and top-tier global enterprises. He has assisted clients in building early warning and obligor scorecard/grading systems used for both risk mitigation and business development. In his duties as chief economist and head financial architect, Rick often meets with banking regulators regarding the key issues of concentration risk, statistical validation, portfolio stress-testing and compliance and has consulted clients in dealing with regulatory issues. As well, Rick serves as lead spokesperson for IBISWorld in the commercial banking arena and often provides senior briefings on key economic risks faced by banks. He has been with the Company since 2002.

Buczynski often contributes to the Risk Management Association Journal. His latest efforts include the seven-part series “Flying Blind into the Next Recession” published in 2018/2021 (with coauthors Kenneth Brown, Dev Strischek and Kent Kirby). He was also authored multiple IBISWorld white papers, webinars, and podcasts; the most recent dealing with the risks and opportunities of COVID-19, globalization, and the nuances of political uncertainty.

In 1980, Buczynski joined Nobel Laureate in Economics Professor Lawrence Klein’s team of researchers at Wharton Econometrics (WEFA) – affiliated at the time with the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. Prior to joining IBISWorld Rick spent over 20 years with Wharton and affiliate companies in various senior research and business executive roles including being the head of both North American and Asia/Pacific sales/marketing. During this tenure, Dr. Buczynski provided testimony before a Joint US Session of Congress on Asian financial conditions and was a key advisor to major corporations and financial institutions in the US and Asia/Pacific region.

Buczynski received his BA, MA and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from the State University of New York. At the SUNY/Buffalo campus, he served as lecturer of economics, statistics and monetary theory in the late-1970s.

Dev Strischek

Principal, Devon Risk Advisory Group
Former SVP/Senior Policy Officer, SunTrust Bank

A frequent speaker, instructor, advisor and writer on credit risk and commercial banking topics and issues, Dev is principal of Devon Risk Advisory Group and engages in consulting, speaking and training on a wide range of risk, credit, and lending topics. As former SVP and senior credit policy officer at SunTrust Bank, Atlanta, he was responsible for developing, implementing, and administering credit policies for SunTrust's wholesale lines of business--commercial, commercial real estate, corporate investment banking, capital markets, business banking and private wealth management. He also spent three years as managing director and credit approver in SunTrust's Florida commercial lending and corporate investment banking areas, respectively. Prior to SunTrust, Dev was chief credit officer for Barnett Bank's Palm Beach market. Besides stints at other banks in Florida, Kansas City, and Ohio, Dev's experiences outside of banking include CFO of a Honolulu construction company, combat engineer officer in the U.S. Army, and college economics instructor in Hawaii, Missouri, and Florida. A graduate of Ohio State University and the ABA Stonier Graduate School of Banking, he earned his M.B.A. from the University of Hawaii.

Dev serves as an instructor in the American Bankers Association’s (ABA), ABA’s Stonier Graduate School of Banking, the Southwestern Graduate School of Banking, and the ABA’s Commercial Lending School. His school, conference, and workshop audiences have included participants drawn from the ABA, RMA, OCC, Federal Reserve, FDIC, FFIEC, SBA, the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and the AICPA.

Dev has written about credit risk management, financial analysis and related subjects for the ABA's Commercial Insights, the Risk Management Association's RMA Journal, and other business professional journals. He is the author of Analyzing Construction Contractors and its related RMA workshop. A past national chair of RMA and former Florida Chapter president, Dev serves as a member of the RMA Journal's advisory board, and an ex-officio board member of the Florida and Atlanta RMA chapters. He also serves on the advisory board of the Atlanta Chapter of the Professional Risk Managers' International Association (PRMIA), and he has consulted on credit risk issues with banks in Morocco, Egypt, and Angola through the US State Department's Financial Service Volunteer Corps (FSVC).  Finally, he served on the Private Company Council (PCC) of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) for 3 years (2018-2021); the PCC's objective is to review and recommend to FASB revisions to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) that are more appropriate for closely held firms.