Reflecting back on the first project I did at MMTC-PAMP, I feel accomplished and proud. My co-intern and I, Soomin, were assigned a project that focused on the analysis of over 200 operational risks at the firm. For this project we worked with two MMTC employees for approximately 5 weeks. The project began with us brainstorming probability proxies for all of the risks given to us, as we were planning to use these proxies in combination with the analysis of historical data, both internal and external to the firm, to generate concrete probability percentages for the likelihood of a risk event.

The project was both comprehensive and informative regarding the operations of MMTC-PAMP in all of its 17 departments and the gold market in India, in its entirety. We spent the bulk of the project extracting data from all the departments, visiting both the production plant and the Purity Verification Centers multiple times to get the information we needed. We also sat with all of the divisions at the corporate office to extract the necessary past data from them. From this portion of the project, I learned the difficulty of an internal auditing process, as no portion of a company likes to be questioned about the mistakes they have made in the past.

After the data extraction portion, we created a comprehensive excel workbook that including information on the risks, their department, their controls, their data availability, and there historical probabilities. We then combined these probabilities with cost impact proxies for each risk to generate numeric values for each risk, allowing us and the management to quantify the incurred risk adjusted cost each department carries.

Overall from this portion of the internship, I learned the value of collaboration, flexibility, and drive to achieve an over-aching goal.