AfDB appoints Nourredine Lafhel Acting Chief Risk Officer

The African Development Bank Group has announced Nourredine Lafhel as its Acting Chief Risk Officer, effective 6th April 2020.

Reacting to the appointment, President of the African Development Bank, Dr Akinwumi Adesina described Nourredine as an experienced and well-respected professional who has contributed immensely to the bank.

"Nourredine is an experienced and well-respected professional who has played an active role in the Bank's asset-liability management and credit risk committees. He has provided critical technical direction in the development of innovative solutions and strategies for balance sheet optimization including sovereign exposure exchange agreement, sovereign risk transfer, Room2Run and the AFAWA risk-sharing mechanism. I am confident that Nourredine will continue to provide critical leadership and innovation to ensure that we maintain our triple-A rating," Adesina said.

Lafhel, a Canadian national, is currently the Sovereign Credit and Market Risk Division Manager (PGRF3), in the Directorate of the Group Risk Management Function of the African Development Bank Group. An experienced risk management professional, Nourredine has more than twenty years of experience in finance and risk management. He is a proven leader in the development of innovative solutions and strategies for balance sheet optimization, capital adequacy and market risk management. He has worked in several continents including North America, the Middle East and Africa.

In his role as Division Manager, Nourredine, has had extensive experience in reviewing market risk, sovereign portfolio reports, sovereign credit policy and the Bank's credit policy and graduation. He has been instrumental in defining the Bank's economic capital requirements for market, credit and operational risk. In particular, Nourredine was part of the team that developed the Room to Run initiative - the Bank's innovative $1 billion synthetic securitization deal.

Before joining the Bank, Lafhel held senior treasury and credit risk roles at S&P Global Ratings as Director, Sovereign and International Public Finance Rating, and as Senior Director, Credit Risk Management & Rating at Acreditus, in the United Arab Emirates. In these roles, Nourredine provided strategic advice, policy guidance and analytical support to MENA sovereign entities in the area of capital markets, credit risk management and ratings on a confidential basis.

Prior to this, he served at the Bank of Canada as a Principal Credit Risk officer, where he was responsible for the implementation of the internal rating methodologies and scorecards of sovereigns, GREs, supranational institutions, and banks. He led credit risk assessments and internal ratings of investment and trading counterparties.

Lafhel is fluent in French, English and Arabic, and holds a Master's Degree in Applied Finance from the University of Quebec at Montreal - ESG School of Management, Canada and a Bachelor (Honours) in Financial Management from the Faculty of Law, Economics and Social Sciences, at University Hassan II of Casablanca in Morocco.