Jacob Kosoff is a lot of things, but idle is not one of them.
He is a well-known expert in the financial quant world. He serves on the Alabama Commission on Artificial Intelligence and Associated Technologies. His work has been published multiple times in industry and trade publications, including American Banker and RMA Journal. He has written white papers and has organized and spoken at internal and external industry events.
Most recently, Kosoff, who is head of Model Risk Management and Validation, spoke about modernizing model risk, a subject he’s dedicating a significant amount of time and energy to. It’s a topic that’s very important for Regions, and one the guest leader shared with QuantUniversity Summer School last month recently.
Models have been increasingly essential as customer needs evolve and financial products and services are developed to meet those needs. As a result, models are developed in many areas throughout the bank and the number of models has increased significantly. To help mitigate model risk, Kosoff and a cross-functional team of model risk managers, model developers and data scientists across Regions have embarked on a modernizing initiative to support better controlled, more accurate, and more efficient models.
Kosoff explained to the QuantUniversity participants how transforming model risk management (MRM) is key to providing robust, timely and effective risk management of the growing uses of models.
He described the path for modernizing model risk management and its benefits, especially for machine-learning models. Kosoff also advised the audience that in order to transform model risk, MRM teams must transform their processes, continuously train their associates and develop strong trusting partnerships with model developers.
“It was a pleasure to speak to this audience about this exciting topic,” Jacob said. “Model Risk Management and Validation is continuously improving and modernizing our approaches in close partnership with multiple teams across the bank, and I’m happy that Regions is a leader in those efforts.”
Be assured that Jacob is not resting on his laurels. Kosoff is actively involved in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives at Regions. And he is passionate about talent development and serves as a career development mentor at his alma mater, Penn State University, for honors students studying Economics, Finance, Statistics and Math.
In fact, the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and the Risk Management Association have invited him to teach at the RMA/Wharton Advanced Risk Management Program this October.
It’s only a matter of time before Kosoff will be sharing his expertise and insight to the next set of quant leaders.