Sometimes I like to think that what I say here has at least some impact. This letter from APRA to the Advanced ADIs in Australia was sent out a month after my last piece on reviewing pandemic planning procedures. As I said – I like to think so.

That bit of auto-backslapping aside, the letter does make several worthwhile points about how hard this is to model. A pandemic is, almost by definition, a rare event with some pretty hefty costs and many effects – not all of them are likely to be reasonably foreseeable.

A read of the piece Jennifer wrote a few weeks back which touches on these sorts of events would also be useful.

Thanks to Langes+ for the pointer to the APRA letter.

As I was writing this I received an email on controlling the risk of the current H1N1 outbreak. Looks like I will not be going to Mexico, the USA, Canada, Panama or Japan any time soon. At least the UK is not on

the list. Yet.