This ongoing series of podcasts focuses on the impact of the pandemic to the economy and the efficacy of various policy interventions. It features economists, policy makers and industry experts, analyzing real-time information, trends and policy ideas as we weather this pandemic. 

I recently sat down with Joe Monaghan, CEO of AON’s Public Sector Partnership, and Bridget Gainer, COO, and discussed risk transfer. In these times of economic volatility, risk transfer is never more relevant.

Dr. Albert Lee, Founding Partner of Summit Consulting, talks with Dr. Mark Hutson, Summit’s Manager of Data Science and Modeling & Statistics about his recent paper Predictive Analytics: the New Tool to Combat Fraud, Waste and Abuse.

At Summit, we provide our clients with data-driven insights, typically basing our results on readily available historical data. We use these data to build models for assessing policy decisions and understanding economic impacts based on what we know has happened and what we think will happen next. Then we combine our judgement with historical information to predict the magnitude of these results. Yet today, many of our clients are scrambling to understand the most likely impacts of COVID-19 on their respective portfolios of business, despite it being an event with few (or any) historical parallels. The question becomes, how do we use historical data and existing tools to determine anything better than a wild guess?

As federal organizations continue to ramp up their use of quantitative analyses to inform decision-making, Summit is building tools and training our clients to help maximize the value of business functions. Summit specializes in making data readily accessible and easily-consumable with visualizations directly from a web browser. Our tools facilitate user-driven scenarios through a dynamic web interface, empowering staff and leaders to make decisions according to the most current data available. Tools like these augment, or even obviate, the need for cumbersome written reports and lengthy model documentation, providing more value for the end-user and greater flexibility in understanding what is truly going on within an organization.

Summit just released my newest white paper: Key Changes to USDA Credit Programs in the 2018 Farm Bill.

I highlight Farm Bill changes to loan programs that (among other impacts) make it easier for new farmers to buy farms, assist disadvantaged farmers in passing farms from generation to generation, and accelerate the deployment of broadband in rural America.

Summit’s Partner, Anthony Curcio, recently sat down with Alok Mathur, President of Global Project Finance Advisory Council, a global project finance advisory firm that has closed $125.4 billion in infrastructure-related finance transactions.  Mr. Mathur brings real insight into screening infrastructure projects, which is very timely given our nation's focus on rebuilding our infrastructure.

Summit’s newest Director, Josh Goldberg, sat down with Partner Anthony Curcio in December 2019 to chat about model risk management and internal controls.

USDA’s Rural Utilities Service Administrator Chad Rupe joined Summit Partner Anthony Curcio for a discussion about the Broadband ReConnect Program, which furnishes loans and grants for the costs of construction, improvement, or acquisition needed to provide broadband service in eligible rural areas.

Effective data management and data usage are critical to the success of financial institutions. Many leading organizations, including dozens of Federal agencies with lending programs, have opted to add dedicated Chief Data Officers (CDOs). One of the primary decisions that a CDO needs to make is how to design and implement a Data Governance Framework.