Okay, so I'm not actually in PHX yet. I am typing on the flight to PHX. As far as flying goes, I am actually getting more and more accustomed to flying. I still get a little anxious, but not nearly as much as before.

I called Randy on his birthday, and he made a comment about how much I go out of town... and in the last blog entry, Jayne mentioned a competition that I am participating in. I though that this would be a great chance to tell everyone more about what I do.

American Express has two banks, the American Express Federal Savings Bank, and the Centurion Bank. Each bank is FDIC insured, and each bank has separate products that it funds. If you look at the credit cards you have, you probably have a VISA or MasterCard that has been issued by a bank (like a Chase VISA or CapitalOne MasterCard). American Express, up until just recently, has issued its own cards, rather than going to other banks to issue them. Due to some recent antitrust legistlation against VISA and MC (that I won't get into here), American Express can now issue its card through third-party banks.

Anyway... so, AMEX has two banks. I work for one of these banks, the Centurion Bank. Some of the products in the Centurion Bank are: Green, Gold, Platinum, and the Centurion charge cards, the Optima line of credit cards, Blue, Blue Cash, Blue Sky, and some others. Within the bank, I work in the Risk Management division. We are the group that quantifies and minimizes risk to the bank. I participate in the project development process of new American Express initiatives that impact the Bank in any way (for example, a current project I am involved in deals with the upcoming fee increase to the Platinum charge card from $395 to $450), as well as help develop code that is used to test our risk policies.

Everyone in Risk Management goes through a one week course teaching the Fundamentals of Risk Management. At the end of the course, teams compete against one another in a risk simulation. Each team is responsible for managing various portfolios, and the team with the best performing portfolio after three rounds is declared the winner.

I participated in this course (and simulation) a month ago. Our team had the best performing portfolio out of the 4 teams competing that week. Well, I recently found out that our team was one of the top 5 teams from all the competitions this year, and so we were invited back to compete in the "Tournament of Champions." It is not anything spectacular, but I am excited to get to compete again. Plus, the PHX weather is nice this time of year, and there is a Fry's two miles from the hotel that I am staying in. I always make a point to go to Fry's every time I go down to PHX, just because we don't have one in Utah.

Well, I will definitely keep everyone posted on the outcome of the competition. Wish me luck!