While cloud adoption by organisations accelerated during the pandemic, many financial organisations have chosen not to move back-office functions onto such external servers, according to a survey by Capgemini. The percentage of survey respondents who said they had started moving services onto the cloud increased from 37 per cent in August 2020 to 91 per cent in August 2023. The report found high levels of executive confidence in such platforms being able to improve customer services and experience, provided their organisations were able to move to the right service provider. Back-office n ..read more

Doing business has become more difficult and uncertain since 2021 and shortages of talent in key areas are hampering risk management efforts, according to a recent survey by Aon. While the risk rankings of the bi-annual survey show little change, the conditions in which those increasingly inter-connected risks arise has evolved rapidly, the report said. Cyber-attacks and data breaches, business interruption, economic slowdown and the failure to attract or retain talent took the four top places respectively. Compounding effects The report said that talent risk was at its highest since the ..read more

For the first time in half a decade, the UK Corporate Governance Code is undergoing a significant transformation. The Code will provide extensive shifts in the responsibilities and obligations of larger organisations in the UK, leading to standards of good practice through emphasis on robust risk management. Perhaps the most significant proposed changes to the Code affect the parts covering audit, risk, and internal controls. This includes company’s now being required to make an annual declaration that proves their risk management systems have been effective throughout that reporting period. W ..read more

The Bank of England (BoE) together with regulatory authorities have launched a series of documents which will form the basis for a new sterling-denominated stable coin regime for Britain. Papers published in November 2023 by BoE, the Financial Conduct Authority and a letter from the Prudential Regulation Authority provide a roadmap aimed at creating clarity over how such instruments will be regulated.  Managing risks “Stable coins present risks both in terms of their innovative use as a form of money or money-like instrument, and their use as a means of payment in ..read more

The UK government has called for better understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) to balance the potential risks and opportunities in a discussion paper on the topic. There are a wide range of potential social risks associated with the development of AI, the report said. Those could include, for instance, the degradation of the information environment as new algorithms spam false data onto existing platforms, unpredictable labour market disruption and bias in corporate and governmental systems. “Long-term consequences, particularly as frontier AI becomes more embedded in mainstream ap ..read more

Business Risk Manager – University of Hertfordshire ..read more

Compliance functions and risk managers said that their top strategic priorities over the coming 18 months are keeping abreast of regulatory changes and mitigating emerging risk, according to Thomson Reuters. Half of respondents to the survey underpinning the report said they had noticed a recent shift in their organisations from viewing compliance as a tick-box exercise to regarding it more as a strategic activity. Strategic perspective “In the past, companies’ risk and compliance functions have often been dismissed as cost centres intent on stifling innovation and opportunity,” the repor ..read more

Cyber risk is the leading systemic risk for the financial sector, according to the most recent report by the Bank of England. And while only 38 per cent said a high-impact event was likely in the short term – 58 per cent thought it likely in the medium terms. These figures had edged down since the previous survey. The majority (63 per cent) of respondents to the bank’s bi-annual survey said that they were fairly confident in the stability of the financial system. Mixed bag But the risk landscape is shifting. The biggest rising threat was risks associated with a UK economic downturn, which ..read more

Modern cars are a “privacy nightmare” and have questionable security practices, according to a report by the tech company Mozilla. While cars have increasingly been described as “computers on wheels” because of their advanced technological capabilities, the report says that the 25 car brands it reviewed failed their tests. That has made them “the worst category of products for privacy we have ever reviewed,” it said. Poor practices Every car brand reviewed collected more data than necessary and used that information in ways that went beyond operating their vehicles and managing customer r ..read more

Smaller businesses are too overwhelmed by coping with day-to-day business demands to focus on sustainability issues, the UK accountancy body ICAEW said.  Research by the organisation showed that net zero, for instance, had “massively dropped down the priority list” because businesses in that category were concerned about the costs of preparing for it. A transition plan can help enterprises with the future sustainability of their own businesses but without the kind of mandatory regulations that larger organisations face, action is unlikely. Risk challenges “Admittedly, it’s not easy t ..read more