The article presents a cross-sectional review of quantitative methods of operational risk measurement and directions of the research conducted in this area.

Surging importance of the operational risk management process in the recent years has necessitated the improvement and extension of the methods and techniques of operational risk measurement applied hitherto, as well as of development of new ones.

The modern system of risk management, inter alia, features the development of databases providing for the occurrence of events in the operational risk area. Both the literature on the subject and practical experience indicate that such databases exist only partially; on the other hand, many organisations are known to have begun the compilation of such databases. Considering the real demand for their establishment and taking into account the belief, common in the literature on the subject, that quantitative methods should be considered basic ones, whereas qualitative methods should be treated as supplementary and auxiliary ones (for the time being, they are considered as basic), the establishment of numerous databases regarding losses incurred due to operational risk seems to be inevitable in the nearest future. Quantitative methods used in operational risk management are still a relatively new issue. The lack of a comprehensive treatment of the methods in the literature on the subject may prove that the methods still have not been finally formed.

New, unconventional approaches to operational risk management, applied both under the Basel II capital accord and also independently, will probably require the application of unconventional qualitative methods of analysis, in addition to the classical, typically quantitative ones, due to the "qualitative" character of operational risk.

The signals that have been sent by the business community to the scientific community for quite some time now, and the increasingly frequent press articles and book publications on the subject of operational risk management may constitute a proof for the wide-ranging research that has been undertaken in this area. However, the results of this research are not bound to meet the huge needs in this respect.