GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Com­pa­nies that fol­low risk man­age­ment best prac­tice stand to be more re­silient and prof­itable, says Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC).

At a re­cent En­ter­prise Risk Man­age­ment sem­i­nar held at the Trinidad Hilton, the com­pa­ny iden­ti­fied cost sav­ings, more ef­fi­cient al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources and im­proved busi­ness per­for­mance as like­ly ben­e­fits when or­gan­i­sa­tions for­mal­ly in­te­grate en­ter­prise risk man­age­ment (ERM) in­to their strate­gic and op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ties.

“When com­pa­nies equip their line man­agers and staff with the tools and tech­niques to iden­ti­fy, as­sess and re­spond to risks in a proac­tive man­ner, it is high­ly like­ly that busi­ness­es will gain a com­pet­i­tive edge,” Bruce Scott, risk as­sur­ance leader for PwC Caribbean said.

He not­ed ma­jor risk ex­po­sures are rarely con­fined to dis­creet ar­eas in an or­gan­i­sa­tion, but rather, can have a domi­no ef­fect across the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Scott said it is for this rea­son that PwC has de­vel­oped a holis­tic ap­proach to risk man­age­ment to help pro­tect busi­ness­es, fa­cil­i­tate strate­gic de­ci­sion-mak­ing and en­hanc­ing ef­fi­cien­cy.

The sem­i­nar was held in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Caribbean Cor­po­rate Gov­ern­ment In­sti­tute, and al­so in­clud­ed pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions on cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity man­age­ment.

PwC Trinidad team mem­bers, Kofi Box­ill, PwC Trinidad ter­ri­to­ry ad­vi­so­ry leader; Kathy-Ann Smith, PwC Trinidad di­rec­tor; An­tho­ny Zamore, and Eliz­a­beth Ar­june, di­rec­tor, shared ex­pert in­sights on hav­ing a sound busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan­ning process that pro­tects against nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, as well as unique dis­as­ters such as a fire or cy­ber at­tack.

They al­so shared in­sights on the im­por­tance of a mul­ti-skilled in­ter­nal au­dit func­tion that can in­de­pen­dent­ly test con­trols over crit­i­cal risks faced by an or­gan­i­sa­tion.

An­tho­ny Zamore, al­so an ex­pert in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy, out­lined the var­i­ous types of cy­ber at­tacks that are preva­lent glob­al­ly and in­creas­ing such as phish­ing and busi­ness email com­pro­mise, and high­light­ed mea­sures to pro­tect one’s crit­i­cal as­sets.

Box­ill, who mod­er­at­ed the ses­sion, ad­vised par­tic­i­pants that “Im­ple­ment­ing the right in­te­grat­ed strate­gies will lead to cost sav­ings, more ef­fi­cient al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources and re­duc­tion in rep­u­ta­tion risk ex­po­sures.

“It is for this rea­son that PwC Trinidad has fa­cil­i­tat­ed this ERM sem­i­nar to share lead­ing trends and tools in ERM, BCM, and Cy­ber.

“PwC be­lieves that busi­ness­es will ben­e­fit from the in­for­ma­tion shared with par­tic­i­pants and we look for­ward to ex­pand­ing our work with Trinidad busi­ness­es to help them to mit­i­gate and man­age key risks,” he added.