Tips to Develop Efficient Operational Risk Management

Operational risk management deals with the grass root levels of a company. Operational risks arise due to human actions, technology, processes and external factors. Most of those risks are generated inside the walls of your company and can be identified and treated even before they occur.

Efficient operational risk management can be achieved by identifying underlying operational risks running in your company. Employees are your main channel of enterprise risk management. So build good rapport with them and look out for the following behaviours:

A silent approach from the employees…

If your organization believes in one-way traffic by providing instructions and not taking feedbacks, then it is time to rebuild your work culture.

Employees should be made aware of prominent and impending risks. Since they are the ones familiar with every basic function of the company, they will be the first ones to spot a threat. Give your employees the autonomy to analyse risks and use an unrestricted gateway to reporting their speculations.

Risk managers can engage with employees on personal levels to learn the remarks and responses towards a range of functions from introducing the new process to the company’s ORM software solutions.

Have your top-level executives taken risk management seriously?

Enterprise risk management needs coordinated efforts of every entity in an organization. And operational risk management takes lead when it comes to the involvement and guidance of management.

You might have installed an ORM software, but ensure that everyone from the top-level executives to the subordinate members are included in the system. Management will motivate the employees to follow their lead and abide by the operational risk management solutions.

Training you resources

In today’s competitive business world, training is not just to evade or move ahead, but to mitigate the possibility of risks.

Employees are your assets, train them to gain individual fortitude and build team strength.

Risk Managers: What Is The Difference Between Risk Management Software VS Spread Sheets

All of us have been using spread sheets and off course we love them. Spread sheets are the ones that would help you analyses the budget of your family, create statistics on the production and the risk assessment process. Wait a second. What was that. Risk Management through Spread Sheets? I am sure some of us must be scratching our head asking how is that possible, where as others may be feeling shy looking away with a small amount of guilt churning in your stomach.

Reassured i am sure that you are not the first one to deal with spread sheets especially when it comes to risk management. Using risk management would help you learn the formulas, checking the cell links, ensuring proper formatting, and risking the human error in the certification auditing program. This is the main inspiration behind our risks management software offering one of the best solutions to the risk management process and not the spread sheets. 

 

The Use of Spreadsheet programs for a better risk management

Spreadsheet programs are considered to be the most essential part of the business and have been utilized for a variety of tasks world wide. The adaptability of these spread sheet programs have led to their use without considering the other solutions. They have been successful in offering features and attributes that have been beneficial for all the risk managers and are bounded with certain limitations.

• A One Time Risk Assessment for Small Business Organizations: When smaller business organizations with limited operations need to complete and succeed in a single risk assessment, it would be proved to be beneficial when you complete risk assessment through a spreed sheet program. And in case of the assessment that has to be repeated the task tends to become tedious resulting in the users managing spread sheets as opposed to risk management.
• No Purchase is required if a spread sheet is already owned by the business organization: Most of the business organizations have already purchased the spread sheet program utilizing the open source of the spreadsheet programs.
• Documents been already shared and transferred between the computers: When business organizations have been having an enterprise version of a spreadsheet program, risk assessments would and can be easily emailed, and placed within the collaboration software allowing you to share it through out the business organizations.
• A proper and a customizable format: Risk managers using the spread sheets program have a better option of customizing the major aspects of risk assessment starting from the calculations to the aesthetics.

Limitations of a Spreadsheet program:

• Sharing out an un protected document: While sharing out the documents related to risk assessment, you run out the risks of edits and changes being made without any sort of the document owners consent. This would lead them to an un approved version of making its publication with a record of when and what changes were made.
• Process of Calculation creation: While utilizing the spread sheets for the risk assessment program users here would have to create and do a proper research on risk calculations that need to be implemented. This could be a daunting task and a time consuming process. Also while implementing these calculations, the risks of utilizing the formulas that are not consistent enough through out their scope increases.
• Repeatability: Risk management process is usually completed many times due to several reasons be it the auditing process or the improvement process. Spreadsheet risk assessment program cannot be set up to be easily repeatable. If the person in charge of the operational risk management process creates the risk assessments and leaves the organization due to a specific reason, then the method used would not be clear unless there is any proper documentation. And in case the document is not created with this assessment then this new assessment may not have to be created.

Risk assessment process can be a complicated process unless you use the right tool at the right place. Organizations here must identify and mitigate risks before they would occur to ensure us with a reliable service maintaining the organizations reputation. Not using an automated and a centralized tool organizations are fray enough and would connect to the risk variables at hand and distinguish the organizations overarching risk position.

Identifying Operational Risks to your Business

Operational Risk Management continues to be an unfamiliar word in many of the countries. They fail to realize the importance of integrating it into their day-to-day business practices. Operational

risk is somewhat different from market or credit risk by being endogenous to the ministry of finance.

Operational Risk Management (ORM) is all about the business environment, the nature and complexity of operational processes, the systems in place, level of management and governance. It also deals with the external events like the natural catastrophe.

There is no perfectly defined regulatory pressures to put or adequate measures to monitor and control these category of risks. According to Basel II defined by The Basel Committee, an ORM framework is necessary for the business operating environment appropriate to its range and nature of treasury operations.

ORM enables the managers and decision makers to develop a wide overview across the enterprise in a holistic way in order to create a properly defined risk profile. This in turn will allow the business heads and the boards to utilize the framework for further governance of the organization. Operational

risks is a more dynamic subject.

Some of the elements of operational risks includes:

• Compliance
• Credit risks
• IT risks
• Investment
• Transaction processing
• Human resources
• Liquidity
• Taxation
• Fraud

Operational risk is an intrinsic part of all financial institutions and is a mandatory practice embed in the governance since the nature of risks are changing everyday. It is a standard recommended procedure for banking products, activities, processes and systems. Therefore it has always been an inevitable part

of any bank's risk management program.

A number of banking institutions are looking forward to adopt effective operational risk governance practices. The key to a sound risk management however lies in understanding the nature and complexity of operational risks. So go ahead and identify the operational risks surrounded in your business.