IRM Bermuda Holds Risk Culture Workshop
On Tues 30th May, the Institute of Risk Management [IRM], Bermuda Regional Group held a cross-sector workshop to allow attendees to discuss how to turn the findings of IRM Risk Culture research into practical terms that were specific to Bermuda and our local businesses.
The event was chaired by the local IRM Chairman, Justin Baillie. Chris Brown, Head of Compliance for HSBC was the opening speaker to remind attendees of the core findings from the research before the attendees were split into industry specific groups.
There were 35 attendees from 20 different organisations who were split into four groups, each moderated by leaders within the industry. Banking and Finance made up two groups moderated by Chris Brown and Justin Baillie who is also the Deputy Head of Compliance at HSBC, Reinsurance and Insurance was moderated by Fid Norton, Enterprise Risk Officer at XL Group and a broad group covering Compliance, Legal, Fund Management and IT Risk Management was moderated by Alison Morrison, Managing Director of Oyster Consulting.
Although the groups had different risks they needed to be aware of, when they came back together to share ideas, it was clear there were common themes when it came to Risk Culture:
- The importance of defining an organisation’s Risk Culture and distilling it down to tangible things that make sense to the individual. This should be well documented.
- Importance of finding ways of ‘rating or scoring’ Risk Culture and assessing it over time
- The need for a ‘Top-Down’ approach
- Requirement for regular, face-to-face training and checks that knowledge is understood
- Remove fear of ‘whistleblowing’, potentially finding appropriate ways to reward good risk awareness and escalation of issues.
- Ensuring Risk Professionals don’t have a ‘tick the box mentality’ and also this is not how they are perceived throughout the organisation
- The need to acknowledge that the Risk Culture of an organisation will change over time and as the organisation goes through changes – it’s necessary to continually review and assess
The next step is to recap the discussion points into a working document that the participants can use as a practical tool in their organisations.
The event was closed by Renne Foggo, Senior Legal Counsel for the National Anti-Money Laundering Committee [NAMLC]. NAMLC is a statutory intra-governmental committee responsible for the formulation of national policy and activities to prevent, detect and combat money laundering and terrorist financing.
Bermuda is currently undergoing a national risk assessment [NRA] of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing risks in Bermuda. This NRA is an essential component of the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force [FATF] and will prepare us well for the next review by the International Monetary Fund. Also, it will impact how Bermuda is perceived by other countries as a place to do business.
The National Risk Assessment will help Bermuda understand its risk and allocate resources appropriately to ensure we meet requirements.A summary report will be produced by the end of the year.
In summing up the event, Justin Baillie, Chairman of the IRM, Bermuda Regional Group said he wanted to “highlight the significant contribution of the moderators Chris Brown and Fid Norton who had made the event possible.”
He thanked all attendees and particularly, the IRM members who had worked so hard to put this event together: Alison Morrison, Michelle Crawford, Nick Nebard, Sandra de Silva and Mark Jennings.
“This was a great example of teamwork and shows what the IRM can offer in terms of leadership opportunities,” said Mr Baillie.
Since the event has concluded, Justin Baillie, has added, “We’re delighted to have run another popular and informative event. We’ve received excellent feedback already and look forward to providing on-going services to the community to help promote education, knowledge sharing and networking amongst our local risk professionals. Our next event is on May 16th and will be a seminar about Operational Risk, we hope to see a great turn out and we encourage people to join us at our Linked In page ‘IRM Bermuda Regional Group’ to keep in touch.”
