Industries – Banking & Financial

THE CHALLENGE

Banking and Financial Services organisations face an increasingly complex and challenging business environment. Faced with a volatile risk environment, the majority of banks and other financial institutions have been driven by their regulators to re-organise and re-prioritise their organisation’s approach to Risk Management and software in general.

TYPICAL RISKS FACING BANKS AND THE FINANCIAL SECTOR INCLUDE:

  • Credit Risk: defined as the potential that a bank borrower or counterparty will fail to meet its obligations in accordance with agreed terms.
  • Market Risk: defined as the risk of losses in the bank’s trading book due to changes in equity prices, interest rates, credit spreads, foreign-exchange rates, commodity prices, and other indicators whose values are set in a public market.
  • Liquidity Risk: defined as the risk that may disable a bank from carrying out its day-to-day cash transactions.
  • Operational Risk: defined as the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems or from external events including legal risk.
  • Systemic Risk: are associated with cascading failures where the failure of a big entity can cause the failure of all the others in the industry.
  • Reputational risk: defined as the possible loss of the organisation’s reputational capital. Everything a bank does is judged by its customers, investors, opinion leaders and other stakeholders who mould a bank’s brand image.
  • Ethical / Moral hazard risk occurs when a big bank or large financial institution takes risks, knowing that someone else will have to face the burden of those risks. E.g. subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 /2009
  • Strategic risk.
  • Increased regulatory pressure including social responsibility, social movements, environmental etc.
  • Technology disrupters.
  • Shortage of skilled and experienced staff.

Executives recognise the importance of continuous risk management and monitoring exposures, but few are able to monitor key risks continuously in their companies. From small community banks to large multinational financial institutions, too many resources are taken up by manual compliance activities. As the number of regulations increase and change, so do the risk assessments required as part of your Risk Management and Compliance process.

THE SOLUTION

A flexible risk management framework is critical for meeting the needs of a complex and dynamic industry such as the financial services industry. Financial service organisations need an effective way of prioritising and managing risk across the organisation, as well as complying with local and cross-border legislation, standards and mandates. Proactive risk management also involves the documenting and managing of incidents / near misses. In addition, the identification and ongoing monitoring of risk mitigation plans is critical to effective risk management.

An organisation’s risk and opportunities, strategy, business model, performance and sustainable development are all inseparable elements of the value creation process. (King IV™ Principle 4)

HOW BARNOWL FACILITATES THE SOLUTION

BarnOwl GRC software streamlines your GRC processes, integrates risk, compliance and assurance information on a centralised platform, standardises risk and control taxonomies and offers the flexibility and scalability required for your changing business environment. BarnOwl Risk Management Software:

  • provides a customisable risk-based framework for the banking and financial services industry (in line with the COSO and ISO31000 standards) for you to manage your operational risk and compliance process, as well as facilitate audits, findings and detailed analysis.
  • enables you to identify and document risks, causes, consequences and related controls (e.g. bowtie).
  • automates risk and control self-assessments.
  • provides a centralised repository for all your regulatory compliance requirements (fully integrated 3rd party compliance library) and tracks how you are meeting each compliance requirement.
  • assists with the automation and monitoring of key risk indicators and compliance activities.
  • streamlines internal audits, forensic audits, as well as third-party audits and enables you to gain real-time visibility into risk-based auditing, audit findings, root cause analysis and the ongoing monitoring of mitigation actions.
  • provides for the recording and monitoring of loss events, tip offs (whistleblowing), conflict of interest, gift registers etc.
  • brings together risk management, compliance, assurance, as well as all related communication, analysis and reporting under a common platform.
  • provides continuous monitoring of your risk universe with early-warning notifications.
  • drives the proactive management of risk mitigation strategies.
  • generates risk intelligence and trend reporting at all levels of the organisation.

THE BENEFITS OF USING BARNOWL

The benefits of using BarnOwl’s Risk Management Software include:

  • Improved GRC maturity through an integrated and flexible GRC solution.
  • Optimise and monitor risk-reward outcomes by gaining a comprehensive, real time view of your organisation’s risk profile.
  • Simplify regulatory compliance, using a single system to manage your compliance requirements and activities.
  • Enhance GRC productivity and efficiency as well as embed standards across the value chain.
  • Facilitate greater communication and collaboration on GRC tasks across all business units and locations.
  • Drive ownership and accountability for risk management across the organisation.
  • Facilitate the principle that an organisation’s risk and opportunities, strategy, business model, performance and sustainable development are all inseparable elements of the value creation process. (King IV Principle 4)