Spero Risk Associates Email Format
Business Consulting and ServicesAlabama, United States2-10 Employees
Spero Risk Associates is a boutique risk consulting firm working with banks and credit unions on model development, stress testing, CECL, ALM/IRR, model validation & MRM governance. Our principals are not generalists. They are former bank executives and quants who have built, validated, and defended models at CCAR institutions under maximum regulatory scrutiny. In 2014, while leading model risk management at Regions Bank, our team received the highest rating in the Federal Reserve's horizontal review of model risk management across major U.S. financial institutions — the result of finding every model deficiency ourselves before the examiners did, and documenting everything honestly. Our core view: development is validation plus creativity. Data and developers are the two biggest model risks that can be controlled. Before building any credit model, we meet with the line-of-business managers who manage the loans — a practice we have been told no other outside firm makes standard. Two-thirds of any development engagement is data preparation, because poor data governance is the rule, not the exception. We do not arrive with a predetermined methodology and force the data into it. Engagements are staffed with senior experts, not delegated to junior teams. Client staff work alongside ours so that when the engagement ends, the knowledge stays in the building. What you pay for is the analysis — not overhead, not layers, not entertainment. Services: model development & implementation. CECL/stress testing end-to-end builds. IRR/ALM modeling. Independent model validation. Model risk management function reviews. Board, executive, and on-line training on model risk, CECL, IRR, and AI risk. We use AI in model development — short, reviewable segments, full human verification — giving a small team the capacity of firms many times larger. Our view: data, developers, and undisciplined AI adoption are the three biggest model risks that can be controlled. We can help with all three.