Are you Ready for an Operational Risk System? Apr 28 2009

So you survived the chaos of 2008. How about focusing 2009 on delivering value through more effective risk and compliance management? In other words, developing the payback to your institution and shareholders for the investment they've made in people, process and technology.

One way to start this is by looking at these four aspects of your risk and compliance programs:

People - are operational risk management and regulatory compliance activities and staff integrated relative to the functional organizational structure?

Process - is there a consistent process for the many risk assessments, compliance reviews, financial control testing and audits? Is this data shared across your specialists?

Technology - are you wishing for, or is an executive asking for, a quick consolidated report of top ten risks, associated losses and control failures to help make informed decisions on investments, mitigation and loss prevention? Do you use too many unconnected and redundant spreadsheets?

Budget - is the CEO asking you to do more with less this year?

If the answers are “yes” to these questions, then you are ready for an operational risk management (ORM) system. If no, then you may need more time to advance your practices (or build up more frustration) before the full value of an ORM system can be realized in your risk management, compliance and audit activities.

To fully realize the benefits of risk and compliance integration, an ORM system is needed to help manage your exposures by consolidating and streamlining risk assessments, control testing, compliance reviews, action plans and audits.

This article was originally published by Stephan Salvador of Metavante Risk and Compliance Solutions, a Methodware partner. To learn more, visit www.metavanteriskandcompliance.com.