Context

Ravenscroft engaged CBO’s assurance services to help them mature their Risk Management Framework (“RMF”) to ensure that it was fit for purpose to demonstrate effective risk management and risk oversight. Ravenscroft’s Chief Risk Officer (“CRO”) had a desire to mature the RMF, thereby documenting and evidencing how the elements of the RMF work together to manage risks for the Ravenscroft Group. The CRO also wished to report on emerging risk to the relevant committees and boards.

Most of the key elements (committee, risk register, policies and procedures) of the RMF were already in place, however Ravenscroft’s CRO sought the expertise and support of CBO to review, challenge and assist with bringing all these elements together in developing an effective risk management and oversight model.

Approach

CBO used our structured RMF approach to assess, challenge and update the key risks faced by the client. To do this CBO initially developed a matrix showing how each business area and product, across all jurisdictions, contributed to each key risk. With the key risks identified it was important to define each risk within the context for the client’s business. This in turn helped the client to document the risk appetite for each key risk.

With these elements in place, the client was able to perform a top-down risk assessment of each risk. This gave the CRO all the relevant information to develop the risk reporting for their committee and board meetings. This reporting also included a view of the emerging risks driven by internal and external factors.

The final step CBO helped with was to develop a bottom-up risk assessment for each key risk. This provided the client with a detailed view of their risk exposures. Each risk exposure was assessed to identify any areas where the top-down and bottom-up risk assessments were not aligned.

The CRO used the various steps above to engage with the risk owners. This allowed the CRO to validate the risks with the risk owners, significantly improving the dialogue at committee and board meetings.

Outcome

Through implementation of our RMF approach, CBO helped the client mature their RMF allowing the CRO to report on key risks with clarity. Alongside this, CBO developed a revised risk reporting to the boards and committees.

Through this approach of careful exploration and testing, CBO were able to help deliver a RMF that included a top down and bottom-up risk assessment, with thought out and refined definitions and risk appetites for each risk to aid assessments and discussions.

Client Feedback

“Having been appointed as the Group Head of Risk in 2021, one of my first roles was to undertake a full review of the existing Risk Management Framework (“RMF”) and how its principles interacted with the wider group, the businesses key strategic documents as well as the key controls of each business area and each service line. Ensuring that Ravenscroft has a robust RMF in place, which is suitable for the size and scale of our operation, was the first step in the process and essential for any financial services business. This approach allows our business to mitigate financial losses, comply with the relevant regulatory environment, preserve the businesses reputation and client trust, while making informed decisions with strengthened resilience.

As our business had grown exponentially over the past 18 years, and continues to evolve, it was easy to see how our risk analysis and oversight had struggled to keep up. This was true not only from our service line development and AUA growth, but also from the ever increasing challenges faced in the regulatory environment. Therefore, being handed a blank sheet of paper by the board of directors to enhance the RMF was liberating and daunting in equal measure.

Having previously worked with CBO on other projects, it was hugely supportive to have them assist Ravenscroft on this journey and offer considered advice and challenge in the redevelopment of our RMF. The result was the successful expansion of an RMF that the group’s Risk Committee could manage on a day-to-day basis and that each part of the business could easily understand and interact with”.

David McGall – Ravenscroft Group Head of Governance, Risk & Compliance.