Presentation

The number, complexity and increase of national and international regulations aim to reply to new awareness of the need for better risk management, which ought to be ever stricter in the global financial model. Implementing an across-the-board and integrated risk management policy is a major challenge within the framework of overall risk control and compliance with regulations. Thanks to our range of services and our expertise acquired throughout our assignments, we can turn these demands into opportunities. Optimind can accompany you in your approaches to identify, assess and reduce existing risks, at the same time setting up ongoing monitoring of emerging risks.

To do this, Optimind works upstream of a project, during the gap analysis and roadmap definition phase, on setting targets both in terms of regulations and business security.

Optimind also accompanies its customers in steering and efficiently organising a risk governance base (committee structure, definition and monitoring of risk limits, scoreboards, alert escalation, etc.).

In terms of risk management, Optimind provides personalised support to define the methodology, organise, roll out and drive your plan.

Optimind proposes an innovative and bespoke offer in line with your challenges, based on teams that combine qualitative and quantitative risk management. This may be made up of skills’ pairs, such as a risk manager and ERM actuary, for example, depending on the phases in the project.

Areas of intervention

• Risk governance
  • Definition of risk profile (risk appetite)
  • Steering the organisation and organisation of committees: tried and tested organisational diagram, committee (risk, audit) operating charters, new products’ committee, etc.
  • Definition and implementation of scoreboards and reports required by regulations.
  • Alert escalation, etc.
  • Training / raising awareness of managers, audit committees and/or elected representatives of boards of directors
  • Monitoring of legal aspects, regulations, etc.
• Risk Management
  • Accompaniment in coming into line with regulatory requirements (Solvency II, Basel II, Basel II directives, AMF regulations, etc.) in project management mode
  • Definition and/or reinforcement of methodological approaches and existing tools
  • Definition of group risk policies
  • Mapping of risks to identify, assess and manage risks
  • Definition, implementation and roll-out of incident databases
  • Analysis of scenarios for major risks
  • Installation of risk indicators
  • Definition of reports at different levels of the organisation
  • Regular monitoring of risks and action plans to reduce risks
  • Special focus on fraud risks, border risks, etc.
• Crisis management – Business continuation plan
  • Identification of critical activities or processes
  • Analysis of the business impact of certain events
  • Installation of the business continuation plan
  • Training of staff
  • Simulation exercises

Case studies

Case study 1: Risk mapping

Assignment

• Mapping of major risks

Objectives

• Define methodology
• Conduct interviews and search information to objectify assessments
• Analysis and consistency work
• Action plan proposal
• Production of documents for the Group risk committee

Results

• Mapping of risks
• Prioritisation of action plans

Case study 2: Major risks: Scenarios and external data

Assignment

• Enhance the current operational risk management scheme with analyses of major risk scenarios and integration of external data

Objectives

• Take stock of what already exists with a view to achieving consistency: global control tool, mapping, incident databases, control plan, link with processes, etc.
• Workshop to define the methodology to analyse the major risk scenarios, using what already exists
• Pilot based on a simple scenario in the form of a workshop
• Propose an approach to use external databases to support the scenario analysis approach
• Selection / definition of criteria / assistance to acquire an external database
• Further analyses of multiple scenarios in the form of one workshop per scenario

Results

• Analysis of major risk scenarios and definition of action plans according to relevance and necessity
• Use of an external database to support the scenario analysis

Case study 3: New products’ committee

Assignment

• Supervise principles and review the approach to launch new products in international subsidiaries

Objectives

• Prepare and hold interviews with international divisions, risks, compliance
• Describe the principles and target processes for launching new products (“must-have” compared to “nice to have”), based on existing processes by integrating changes in regulations, notably ORSA (Solvency II) requirements and use test requirements in the event of using an in-house model
• Define the scope of a new product
• Define orientations in terms of minimal objectives (modalities of entity-specific applications)
• Write an operating charter for the new products’ committee
• Create a monitoring approach and lift any reservations
• Launch a pilot audit on a foreign subsidiary

Results

• Description of principles and target processes for launching new “must have” products

Proposal to reach targets gradually for the pilot subsidiary