Caio, a senior vice president for Latin America Wholesale Risk at HSBC in Sao Paulo, estimated he would earn back his financial investment in NYU Stern’s Master’s in Risk Management program within two years. As for the experiential return on investment, meanwhile, that started paying dividends immediately.
 
“One of the major benefits of the program is the integrated risk perspective you gain,” he explains. “Risk professionals tend to have a very focused approach, and sometimes, by mitigating credit risk for example, you end up exposing a firm to market risk, and by mitigating the market risk you created you end up generating operational risk. So it is paramount to have an integrated view of risk to find the best approach to mitigate all risks in the most comprehensive way possible, not just the risk type you are responsible for. The program enabled me to break the silos that usually separate risk specialties and see several risk classes that were not familiar to me.”
 
From the start of Caio’s career, at age 19, risk fascinated him, and his undergraduate degree in economics helped convince him that risk was his future: “Once you understand how economies work, you understand what can go wrong and cause millions in losses, in particular for banks,” he says.
 
When he was posted to New York for a three-year position with HSBC, Caio arrived with the aim of further developing his skills and knowledge. He checked out the top master’s programs in the US Northeast to see how they stacked up in regard to ROI, the material’s applicability to his career, flexibility in regard to his work schedule, and the curriculum’s strength. Stern’s MSRM program, he says, was “a perfect fit.”
 
The program had much to commend it, he found: an outstanding faculty, a strong alumni network, a very complete curriculum, and a diverse cohort—“not only from a geographical perspective,” he recalls, “but also from an agent perspective—including regulators, banks, rating agencies, entrepreneurs, advisory firms, etc.—all the main actors of the market. With this background, I am much better positioned to take over a more comprehensive role, one that encompasses other risk areas, not just the one I spent most of my career on.”

Update: Please note that Caio is now the Head of Wholesale Corporate Credit Approvals at HSBC.