Leaders in Risk and Compliance, Round Table Insights – 2022
It was a pleasure to host the Risk and Compliance Round Table in Melbourne this week with a number of leaders within the financial services industry. The agenda navigated topics spanning People – Attrition, Retention and Attraction, Building a Better Risk and Compliance Function, Risk Cultures in Successful Financial Services Organisations, and Key Risk and Regulatory Changes.
Key People Challenges: Attrition, Retention and Attraction
The consensus amongst the attendees was organisations and teams have been struggling balancing their workloads with existing team members while managing resourcing constraints while trying to recruit for their teams. For further insights into Key People Challenges please see our most recent Risk and Compliance Market Update- August 2022.
Growth of Risk and Compliance within Financial Services Organisations
One of the key insights garnered from the discussion was the increasing growth of risk and compliance teams within financial services organisations. After the Royal Commission there is still a true commitment to creating a mature infrastructure of risk and compliance within these businesses. Regulatory demands have been ever increasing with no signs of slowing down and given the shallow pool of candidates with in-depth experience within the different facets of risk and compliance in Australia, a war on talent has ensued.
Building A Better Risk & Compliance Function
The conversation amongst attendees covered the concerns and challenges faced in creating a healthy risk and compliance function within their organisations. A key focus was technology and data solutions and how to automate risk and compliance reporting withing businesses as well as the technological and operational risk transformations clients were overseeing to help build a better risk and compliance function.
Another key focus for many clients in attendance was ESG within people’s funds and how organisations have approached this key theme. Questions covered how funds are planning on tackling ESG regulations in the pipeline and what weighting organisations are putting on ESG in their portfolios. ESG Risk frameworks require constant evolution with a both retrospective view on existing products and new launches.
Risk Culture in Successful Financial Services Organisations
Many clients conveyed their challenges in communicating key information and critical details to their key stakeholders in their business. Insights and examples shared on how to digest technical information for non-technical peers and how to ensure to highlight the “what’s in it for me” message with each and every stakeholder they liaised with to help drive successful risk cultures in businesses. There was a suggestion to appoint risk stewards across different functional teams, independent to the risk and compliance team to aid risk stewardship and embedding the culture.
Another key point was in relation to how does the risk management function provide value in mitigating risk by implementing meaningful risk management strategies versus getting stuck in a depth of red tape? The consensus seemed to be on reiterating the critical business risks and purpose of the organisation and not getting too tied into the “tick a box” compliance mentality in order to help businesses remain commercial.
Adapting to Regulatory Change
Superannuation, global and domestic fund managers are all adapting to constant regulatory change and leaders highlighted which gives rise to its own challenges. For example, the introduction Your Future Your Super (YFYS), which has resulted in the “stapling” of super funds as well as mandating superannuation funds to be subjected to annual valuation tests has been challenging as there has been an increased focus on performance in the short term which has resulted in an increased need of hiring additional talent to ease regulatory workload as well as understand and handle the investment risk and compliance obligations of the fund.
We look forward to continuing to observe how the industry looks to implement solutions to the present challenges they face and continuing to support them in finding the most advantageous solutions for their distinctive businesses.
We thank our clients and industry leaders from Equity Trustees, Aware Super, Western Asset Management, AMP Capital, IFM Investors, REST Super, RMBL Investments, Australian Super, Lonsec, Macquarie, Risconomy, Catholic Church Insurance, Newmark Capital, Uni Super, Franklin Templeton and Funds SA who contributed valuable insights to the discussion. We look forward to hosting and partnering with you again in the near future.
For any enquiries on recruitment please contact Amanda Chisholm, Manager – Legal, Risk and Compliance on 0412 123 726 or at amanda@kaizenrecruitment.com.au.
Kaizen Recruitment specialises financial services recruitment across funds management, wealth management, superannuation, investment consulting and insurance. We are based in Melbourne and Sydney. For assistance or further information please telephone our office at +61 3 9095 7157 or submit an online form.
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