Good governance is a business driver as well as a process offering non-stop opportunities for improvement. One of today’s greatest challenges for organisations in pursuing their strategic objectives is risk awareness and risk management while maintaining their agility and making allowance for the increasing volume of complex rules and regulations. Governance, risk and compliance are three crucial issues for financial enterprises. Is your governance structure fit for the future? How risk-aware is your organisation? And how can you comply with rules and regulations without losing your agility, which is crucial in a fast-paced sector?

Governance

Good governance involves strategic issues in a complex and rapidly changing sector. Yet, many financial enterprises still consider good governance as ‘just a requirement the law forces them to meet’. By doing so, they’re missing out on a massive opportunity to gain a strategic edge and create long-term value. After all, good governance is not so much about following the letter of the law as it is about the intention behind how you give shape to pursuing your strategic objectives.

In addition to requiring capable people, good governance depends on clear arrangements about information provision, powers, formal and informal dialogue, and compliance with corporate governance regulations. Our corporate governance specialists can hold up a mirror to you. They would be happy to advise you on where and how you could improve, never losing sight of your strategic objectives and your corporate culture.

Risk

Risk awareness is progressively being enforced in the financial sector, both in and outside organisations. Executives, supervisory directors and regulators increasingly want to know about the principal risks facing an organisation and the quality of its controls. The belief that they can learn about an organisation’s risks and controls just by measuring hard controls is a thing of the past. The role of national and international laws and regulations is growing: Solvency II, Basel III and IV, ORSA and SIRA are designed to provide financial enterprises with frameworks and tools for improving their risk management. To safeguard an organisation’s ability to continue as a going concern, it needs to develop a continuous awareness of the risks it faces and the potential impact of trends in the market on its risk profile.

Compliance

As a financial institution, your organisation is subject to a large – and growing – volume of complex rules and regulations. You can’t allow any doubts about your compliance with these rules and regulations to take root with your stakeholders (i.e. customers, regulators and the public). But compliance with rules and regulations should not be an end in itself. You need to approach compliance risks from the perspective of your strategic objectives and embed your strategy in the DNA of the organisation. That’s how BDO sees it.

Aligning compliance with corporate strategy

Put simply, rules and regulations lay down the law. But faithfully embedding all these rules and regulations in an organisation would qualify as overreaching. Our aim is to make the most of the options that are available under the law by aligning compliance to your corporate strategy, rather than the other way around. It’s not just the hard controls that matter, but aspects of conduct and culture are equally important, if not more so. This calls for proper embedding of compliance in the organisation and awareness of the need for adequate compliance management.

The Financial Services sector group can help you interpret and implement rules and regulations in a way that’s appropriate to your organisation. The sector group holds the view that, in principle, new rules and regulations are always designed to increase awareness and/or prompt a change in conduct.

The Financial Services sector group can help you interpret and implement rules and regulations in a way that’s appropriate to your organisation. Our service offering also includes co-sourcing and outsourcing of your compliance function tailored to the particular objectives, issues and corporate culture of your organisation. This calls for customised services by professionals. Please feel free to contact one of our specialists for an informal chat with no strings attached.