Starling, a pioneering risk governance solutions provider, has today announced the appointment of banking sector veteran Lara Warner to its Industry & Regulatory Advisory Board.
Throughout a nearly 20-year career at Credit Suisse, Warner held several leadership roles, among them: Head of US Equity Research, Global Head of Fixed Income & Economic Research, and Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer of the firm’s Investment Banking division. As Group Chief Compliance and Regulatory Affairs Officer, Warner led the separation of Compliance from the Legal function and successfully launched a new 2,000+ employee risk management organization. She concluded her tenure in the role of Group Chief Risk & Compliance Officer and was a member of the firm’s Executive Board for six years. Prior to joining Credit Suisse, in 2002, Warner was a Senior Research Analyst at Lehman Brothers and, earlier, Director of Investor Relations at AT&T.
“I am excited to join Starling because they are working to address pervasive and unsolved risk challenges in a smart and novel way,” Warner said. “The most significant losses firms face today typically stem from so-called ‘non-financial risks.’ But while we have robust metrics to guide us in managing the whole gamut of financial risks — credit risk, counter-party risk, etc. — when it comes to risks that flow from organizational culture, and the conduct that it permits or promotes, we’re still relying on ‘management intuition’ or blunt instruments better suited to the pre-digital era,” Warner added. “Experience teaches me that, at the end of the day, non-financial risks are in fact financial risks, and Starling is advancing non-financial risk governance to meet the demands of today’s C-suite executives, boards, shareholders, and regulators,” she added. “The bank failures of 2023 make plain just how important this work is — for the industry and its overseers alike.”
“I can’t overstate how grateful I am to have Lara’s guidance,” said Starling Founder & CEO Stephen Scott. “At Starling, we’re developing quantitative tools and data-driven methods to help leaders navigate some of the most persistent qualitative challenges in risk governance and supervision,” Scott explained. “As the former head of risk and compliance at one of the world’s most significant financial institutions, Lara has a long history of dealing with precisely such challenges,” he added. “It’s hard to imagine someone better placed to help steer us as we develop practical solutions to real-world problems. Given the experience of Spring 2023, Lara knows better than most how – and why – our current risk governance toolset is failing the industry,” Scott said. “Who better to help craft a new approach that’s fit-for-purpose?”
A trusted advisor, Lara has contributed her expertise and leadership to a number of nonprofit boards, including the Women’s Leadership Board and Dean’s Executive Committee at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society and Communication and Society Programs; and The Pennsylvania State University’s Smeal College of Business Board of Directors.
On Starling’s advisory team, Warner joins several other prominent industry figures. Among them, Gary Cohn, former Director of the U.S. National Economic Council, and past-President & COO of Goldman Sachs, now serving as Vice Chairman of IBM, and Barbara Novick, a co-founder and past Vice-Chairman of BlackRock, now serving on the boards of Intel, New York Life Insurance, the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. For more, please see here.