Maintaining credible risk capital allocations for the purpose of risk-return optimisation
required a great deal of political aptness on the part of risk capital controllers. However, their
contribution to the workings of the Group’s VBM framework was so endemic that it was
taken for granted and invisible in the eyes of top-level decision makers. Hence the paradox of
getting the politics of risk management right: by doing so, the risk function turned invisible –
a mere cog in the wheel of value creation.