Governance, Risk and Regulatory Services

Consulting offerings

In our experience, most organizations are spending a majority of their risk management time, money and energy focusing on compliance related risks. However, we also see many organizations taking risk management well beyond compliance, often factoring it into their strategic plan. Their focus is shifting to creating a risk management program that helps enable leadership and the people of the organization to make real-time risk-based decisions based on timely, accurate and complete information. Their objective is to build risk awareness into the daily business activities of each function, business unit and employee, building what we call a Risk Intelligence Enterprise.

Deloitte offers services and solutions to help our clients in their efforts to manage risks and focus on the right risks. This approach is designed to help enable our clients to focus on not only avoiding risks, but on taking the right risks to help create more value within their organization. Learn more about Governance, Risk and Regulatory Services.

Building a risk intelligent enterprise

Traditionally, companies have treated risk management as a separate activity assigned to the Internal Audit or Risk department. Moreover, business leaders – due to indifference or lack of information – have tended to ignore risks until they became actual problems. This narrow, reactive approach might have been good enough in the past, but not anymore. As recent crises have shown, even the world’s largest and most admired companies may not have the right processes, tools, and structures in place to manage risk effectively.

To become a Risk Intelligent Enterprise ^TM, a company must embed governance and risk management capabilities into everything it does – and every decision it makes. The key is to focus not only on risk avoidance, but also on risk-taking as a way to create value. That means: developing business strategies that explicitly identify and mitigate potential risks; integrating risk management into day-to-day business processes; deploying technology to support risk analysis and informed decision-making; and educating employees about the risks associated with their specific jobs, establishing performance measures that reward them for managing risk, and holding them accountable for their actions.

Bottom-line benefits

There are tangible business reasons to invest in becoming a Risk Intelligent Enterprise. Common benefits include:

• Increased market value by strengthening the trust of investors, shareholders, and customers
• Improved business performance through robust business strategies that capitalize on upside risk while managing downside risk
• Enhanced public image and reputation by staying out of the headlines and addressing risks before they become problems
• Reduction in both costs and risk by making risk management an integral part of the business aligned with daily activities (rather than a separate layer that requires additional time and resources)

How to create more value now

1. Walk the talk. As a leader, your actions set the tone for the rest of the organization. No matter how much you talk about the importance of managing risk, if your actions don’t align with your words, no one will listen.
2. Get the right people involved. Effective risk management requires deep business knowledge. Yet all too often a company’s risk strategies and policies are developed by a risk specialist who doesn’t really understand the business. Interviewing experts from the front lines is not enough; people with hands-on experience need to be directly involved in designing your risk strategies and processes.
3. Make it easy to do the right thing. Designing risk management as an extra layer of work discourages compliance. If you want people to do the right thing, you need to make it easier and more rewarding than doing the wrong thing.
4. Monitor and adjust. Risk intelligence is an ongoing process, not a one-time event, and requires continuous monitoring. This not only helps ensure compliance, but also provides early visibility to new or changing risks that might warrant a shift in strategy.

How we can help

A comprehensive approach to governance, risk management and regulatory compliance requires a full range of experience. Deloitte offers knowledge and experience that no other firm with global resources can match. We help clients tackle the broad issues of enterprise risk management and effective corporate governance, while offering specialized assistance in high risk areas such as financial reporting, tax, information technology, human capital, anti-fraud and dispute consulting, and financial advisory services. Our professionals also have deep experience in every major industry, so we can provide guidance and insight that makes sense for your particular business.

Whether the challenge is to design and build an effective risk management approach for the entire enterprise, or to identify, prioritize, and mitigate specific risks in strategy, operations and regulatory compliance, Deloitte has the knowledge and experience to get the job done. Our consulting services include:

• Strategic risk consulting
• Regulatory risk consulting
• Human capital risk consulting
• Technology risk consulting
• Operations risk consulting

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