Overview:

• Through Challenge Advisory’s detailed risk assessment and compliance project, the client benefitted from an increased status and perception of compliance within its organisation.

Challenge:

Challenge Advisory was approached by a leading investment bank that wished to restructure its compliance infrastructure. This was in response to increased scrutiny from corporate governance, as well as compliance and potential conflicts of interest with Wall Street.

The client asked Challenge Advisory to provide a comprehensive insight into the client’s entire philosophy on compliance, as well as the client’s strategy with respect to its professional values and its reputation. Additionally, the client also wished to improve its core compliance processes by identifying potential areas of profit and development.

The Revelation:

Challenge Advisory’s risk team set out to understand the client’s current position. To do this, they constructed a company wide analysis, which consisted of internal assessments, benchmarks, as well as from external sources such as regulators. For the internal assessment, Challenge Advisory conducted around 160 interviews across several regions and product lines, asking questions concerning the client’s philosophy, strategy, organisation and governance, as well as the client’s processes and hand-offs.

The risk team also collected information on the roles of culture, efficiency and technology. A similar number of parties were also contacted for the benchmarking survey.

Using the data the risk team compiled, Challenge Advisory then worked to understand the key differences between the clients and their competitors, and used these differences to suggest different ways in which the client could improve and match up to their contemporaries.

Among the suggestions made by the risk time were changes to the overall structure of the client’s organisations, such as the chain of responsibility and implementation processes. As well as this, Challenge Advisory recommended a higher level of detail when it came to investment requirements and tracking mechanisms.

Outcomes:

Challenge Advisory completely overhauled the client’s governance structure in a number of months. This had a marked effect on the overall performance of the client, expanding both their domain of compliance and lending a large hand toward removing informational silos in the client’s organisation.

Through Challenge Advisory’s detailed risk assessment and compliance project, the client benefitted from an increased status and perception of compliance within its organisation.