Advisory Services

Firms active in the financial services industry are faced by a multitude of challenges, many of which are continuously evolving and changing how they manifest themselves on the firm. These challenges span the spectrum from good governance, corporate culture and conduct, through regulatory change and regulatory compliance requirements, to the full range of risk management needs, independent business and executive assurance to making sense out of the broad range of data and information constantly being presented to management.

Managing the inherent risks and exposures that arise from participation in the world’s financial markets is nothing new to any financial services firm. What is new, however, is both the speed and volume of change and the expectation of a board range of stakeholder groups on how quickly the firm responds to and manages the potential impacts of these changes.

In this environment, few firms have the necessary breadth of experience and knowledge available to address these challenges internally, creating the need for appropriate external assistance from partners capable of assisting the firm with customised, yet intuitive solutions within short timeframes. Gone are the days of massive pyramid-structured consultant teams – today it is all about small and lean, experienced individuals or small teams focussed on specific issues, yet within the overall strategic context of the firm and its markets.

The RiskBusiness team consists of seasoned industry players who have proven experience in designing, delivering and implementing leading governance, risk, audit and compliance practices and who continue to play an active role in industry working groups, contributing thought leadership through publications and education. RiskBusiness has, both as individuals and collectively, a depth of established relationships with leading firms, associations and regulators across the field of corporate governance, internal audit, risk and compliance management.

RiskBusiness specialises in assisting our clients design bespoke solutions to their requirements and in reviewing and assessing existing approaches to solving the issues that the firm faces. Our engagements range from designing and assisting to implement different approaches to risk assessment, addressing how emerging risks should be addressed, through designing and reviewing how the firm addresses accountability (such as through a three lines of defence model), to designing the approach to regulatory change monitoring and management or assessing the overall maturity of the firm’s risk management frameworks. Selected case studies on some of our advisory projects are available here.

Included within our advisory services is a range of customisable educational courses designed, built and delivered to our clients, supported by mentoring and knowledge-transfer programmes. RiskBusiness also specialises in maturity assessments and comparative benchmarking of our clients against good industry practice and regulatory expectations. We are the leading provider of advisory assistance in the area of classification taxonomies and how firms can leverage data across its governance, risk, audit and compliance activities to provide proactive 360° information to management for informed decision making.

Our advisory clients include banks active in the global markets, retail banking, commercial banking, investment banking and broker-dealers, through international financial institutions, multi-lateral development banks and non-governmental agencies, asset managers, hedge funds and investment managers, to (re)insurers, insurance brokers and central banks, regulators, market supervisors, monetary authorities and financial exchanges.