Tag: James Bone

Managing Risk in the Financial Sector

managing-compliance

On Sept. 16, 2009, Compliance Week and Navigant Consulting presented an exclusive editorial roundtable about compliance practices at financial services firms at The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Boston.

(Apparently not so exclusive, considering I was able to get in. I even made it into one of the article’s pictures. – That’s me eating my fingers in the background.)

Compliance Week Editor-in-Chief Matt Kelly moderated the session, which featured Daniel Bender and John Schneider of Navigant Consulting. The full roster of participants is in the article’s sidebar.

You can read more about what we discussed during the roundtable in an article in Compliance Week: Managing Risk in the Financial Sector. (Subscription Required)

A few of my favorite quotes from the article:

Lou Iglesias, chief compliance officer of PanAgora Asset Management: Part of the role of a compliance and risk officer is “being a student of history” and learning from past industry mistakes. “And you don’t have to look back too far to find them.”

James Bone, founder of GlobalComplianceAdvisors LLC: Because there is no school for compliance, continually developing new staff to keep up with regulations is also a challenge. Even if you have an unlimited budget to hire talent, “finding people who have the right skill-set to do the things that you need to get done” isn’t always easy.

Redefining Risk

risk

Maybe we should define risk as what needs to go right, instead of what could go wrong.

Although I would like to claim credit for this view of risk, it came from James Bone of Global Compliance Advisors, LLC. I met James at a Compliance Week round table last week discussing risk management and regulatory developments for the financial services industry.

By changing the definition, you are now looking at risk through the operations of your company and its business plan. You are no longer the doomsayer, worrying about the myriad of things that could go wrong, some of which are likely to highly unlikely. You are now focusing on implementing your company’s business plan.

Compliance and risk professionals need to keep an eye on what may go wrong. But, as James points out, it is just as important to make sure things are going right.

Image is by anarchosyn: RISK AWR WC T7L LosAngeles Graffiti Art
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24293932@N00/ / CC BY-SA 2.0