Risk Management

The Top 10 Enterprise Risk-Management Myths: Gordon Burnes looks at some of the common myths surrounding ERM and from the US experience, the importance of managing risk and compliance information more strategically to support better risk management framework.

Source: NEWSFACTOR.com

 Survey Finds Risk Management Still Lacks Boardroom Clout: A recent survey of leading UK businesses has revealed that "risk management has yet to be fully integrated into the decision-making process at board level among top European businesses”.

Source: Insurance Journal

Case Study – Revitalising Risk Management: InConsult was recently approached by two industry leaders to help revitalise their risk management framework.  After initial consultation to obtain an understanding of their needs, we delivered a solution consisting of:

§         an ERM Health Check to identify gaps in the existing ERM framework and made a number of recommendations;

§         a series of risk management training courses for senior management and all risk owners to introduce them to the fundamentals of risk management and outline the organisations risk management strategy and context;

§         a series of facilitated risk workshops to update the risk register,  identify new risks, re-evaluate existing controls and develop action plans in the context of specific business unit objectives that were aligned to organisational strategy;  and

§         GuardianERM.net technology was used to facilitate the risk workshops and deliver risk profiles to risk owners to validate the workshop results and allow risk owners to maintain their own profiles in the future.

Our solution delivered immediate benefits to the organisations risk and governance culture.  After the risk management training, risk owners were more confident and were looking forward to the risk workshops and put into practice their newly acquired skills.  If you’d like to find out more, contact Annemie Pelletier on 02 9241 1344.

Enterprise Resilience

Stop the press: Mugabe out of Monopoly money: In a classic case of poor business continuity planning and supply chain risk management, Zimbabwe is about to run out of the paper to print money on.  What next…a Mugabe Credit Card?

Source: Sydney Morning Herald 

Person contracts deadly horse virus: Not quite a pandemic, but a person has tested positive for the deadly Hendra virus following an outbreak among horses in Brisbane.  Meanwhile in NSW, it takes about 20 days for NSW Health to report a gastro outbreak, according to a State Government document that warns nursing home residents are at risk.

Source: news.com.au 

New standard will help with information security risk management: ISO has released a new standard: ISO/IEC 27005:2008 Information technology – Security techniques – Information security risk management.

Source: ISO

Governance & Compliance

ASIC acts against directors of failed companies: ASIC has disqualified a further six directors from managing corporations following their involvement in failed companies and in the 2007–08 financial year, ASIC disqualified 52 directors from managing corporations for periods totalling 175 years.

Source: ASIC

Internal Audit

Essential elements of ERM and the role of Internal Audit: A presentation to IIAA NSW Chapter Members on the synergies between ERM and internal audit and strategies internal audit can adopt to promote ERM.

Source: InConsult  

Risk Management Concerns Audit Committees: A survey of 300 audit committee members found that only 28 percent consider themselves "very satisfied" that they understand the process used by management to identify and assess significant business risks.

Source: WEBCPA 

Financial Management

Regulators of the World Unite: The world's securities regulators take steps to increase their oversight of international accounting standards.

Source: CFO.com

Occupational Safety, Health & Environment

New safety controls for Major Hazard Facilities: WorkCover NSW has announced new safety controls for the operation of major hazard facilities across New South Wales covering mainly petro-chemical and hazardous material sites.

Source: WorkCover NSW 

Environmental risk management is hampered by uncertainty:  According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the effective management of environmental risks is being hampered by a lack of certainty about the impact of environmental liabilities and slow progress on international regulatory harmonization.

Source: Insurance Business Review

Government

NSW Department of Local Government releases a new Model Code of Conduct.  The Code of Conduct has been developed to assist council officials to understand the standards of conduct that are expected of them and enable them to fulfil their statutory duty to act honestly.

Source: NSW Department of Local Government

Financial Services

Improving confidence in the integrity of Australia's capital markets: A presentation by ASIC Commissioner, Belinda Gibson, to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia outlining ASIC strategies for improving market confidence.

Source: ASIC 

APRA has released its final general insurance refinements package.  The key refinements are:

§       recognition of five different categories of insurer, with modifications to the prudential framework tailored to the risk profiles of the categories; and

§       changes to APRA's capital requirements in relation to foreign reinsurance and also to equity and property investments.

Source: APRA

Upcoming Events

28-29 July 2008 - Benchmarking Best Practice in Local Government Conference.  InConsult is sponsoring the 2008 Benchmarking Best Practice in Local Government Conference to be held in Sydney.  The conference will feature case studies of local government best practice in improving Council workforce culture, Council management systems and processes, financial management, risk management, environmental sustainability and information technology.

5 August 2008 - Introductory Risk Management Training.  A very popular one day course designed to introduce participants to the fundamental and most important concepts of risk management using the very popular AS/NZS:4360 risk management standard.  

13 August 2008 - GuardianERM.net Lunch Briefing.  You’re invited to take look at our comprehensive web-based ERM technology now used by general insurers, health insurers and non-profit organisations to streamline their risk management and governance activities.  Our next lunch briefing starts at 12:00pm and concludes at 2:00 pm.