Mr. Lam founded James Lam & Associates in April of 2002 to work directly with clients on risk management issues and opportunities. He has completed engagements for The World Bank, Salomon Smith Barney, Allied Capital, First Data, Risk Management Association, Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, and GMAC. Mr. Lam has twenty years of experience in risk and business management. He has been an early advocate of enterprise risk management, and is noted as the first ever “chief risk officer.”
In January 1999, Mr. Lam joined Oliver, Wyman & Company as a partner to establish ERisk, a company that provides integrated consulting and Internet-based analytical tools to banks and energy firms. As founder and president of ERisk, Mr. Lam was responsible for business strategy, marketing and sales, client relationships, and product development.
Between 1995 and 1998, Mr. Lam served as chief risk officer of Fidelity Investments, the largest mutual fund company in the world with $700 billion in assets under management. The Economist, Price Waterhouse Review, and Risk Magazine have profiled his work at Fidelity as best practice in case studies. Prior to Fidelity, Mr. Lam worked as chief risk officer of FGIC Capital Markets Services, Inc., a GE Capital company.
Mr. Lam is the author of “Enterprise Risk Management” published by Wiley. Two months after release, the book ranked top-10 best selling among risk management titles on all major book websites. In 1997, Mr. Lam received the inaugural Financial Risk Manager of the Year Award from the Global Association of Risk Professionals. He is a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel of PRMIA, and has worked with the IIA, RMA, SOA, and other professional associations. Mr. Lam speaks regularly at conferences, and has appeared on national TV and cable news programs. He has been published extensively, with over 50 articles and book chapters currently to his credit. Mr. Lam is a contributing author of numerous books, including “Modern Risk Management: A History” (with Nobel prize winners Markowitz, Modigliani, Samuelson, and others) and “Derivatives Handbook” (with Alan Greenspan, Merton Miller, and others). He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Risk Magazine, CFO Magazine, and American Banker.
Mr. Lam graduated summa cum laude with a BBA from Baruch College (1983), and has an MBA with honors from UCLA (1989). He was appointed a senior research fellow at Beijing University in 2004. Mr. Lam has lectured at Harvard Business School as the subject of a HBS case study, and has taught graduate-level courses in risk management and advanced derivatives at Babson College as an adjunct professor of finance.
