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Recent Coverage Of Risk Assessments And ERM

Below is some of the most recent Compliance Week coverage on issues related to enterprise risk management, risk assessments, continuous auditing, the COSO guidance, and more. Don’t forget to access risk-related templates in our Resource Exchange. Also, see ERM columns by Richard Steinberg, who was involved in developing COSO’s Enterprise Risk Management—Integrated Framework.

  Title & Description Date Type of Article
1. Risk-Management Lessons From the Credit Crisis
As the United States and the world sort through the credit crisis, and the financial markets continue to gyrate and governments craft and recraft programs in an attempt to avert disaster, one wonders what went so very wrong with those much-touted risk management systems of major financial institutions. Weren’t the big guys with the highly polished reputations supposed to have in-depth knowledge of what their risks were, and manage those risks to be profitable and sustainable? How did they, and we, end up here?
 By Richard M. Steinberg
11/18/08 Columns & Editorials
2. Companies Urgently Search for Hidden Risks
The phones are ringing off the hook at risk-management consultancies these days. So far, however, it’s just a lot of window-shopping.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
11/04/08 Compliance Week Coverage
3. Debunking SOX Theories One Misconception at a Time
Having worked with many boards of directors, it’s clear that most directors now understand what Sarbanes-Oxley is all about. They’ve spent the last few years dealing with many of its provisions, with audit committees spending significant time on Section 404’s internal control requirements. Some initially lost sight of other important responsibilities, although generally boards have returned to a more balanced approach of providing effective advice, counsel, and direction on strategic business issues in addition to their compliance monitoring roles.
 By Richard M. Steinberg
09/16/08 Compliance Week Coverage
4. When Executives Discuss ERM Challenges
Recently I had the privilege of leading a forum of senior executives experienced in risk management in a discussion of the challenges of developing, implementing, and gaining the benefits of ERM.
 By Richard M. Steinberg, Compliance Week Columnist
08/19/08 Columns & Editorials
5. Building a Strong Risk-Management Team
In one form or another, enterprise risk management has always been an essential part of an organization’s operations. But that is arguably more true today than ever before.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
07/01/08 Compliance Week Coverage
6. S&P Starts Including ERM in Credit Ratings
Standard & Poor’s is giving companies a new financial incentive to take enterprise risk management more seriously: It will affect their credit ratings.
 By Christine Dunn
06/17/08 Compliance Week Coverage
7. Auditing Your ERM Program
Everyone talks about the need for good risk-management programs, but nobody seems to know how to audit them to ensure they actually work.
 By Dan Swanson, Compliance Week Columnist
05/06/08 Columns & Editorials
8. “For Want of a Nail”: ERM for the Regulators
During the Revolutionary Era in this country, Benjamin Franklin printed an old English rhyme in his Poor Richard’s Almanack that touted the benefits of preparedness and preparation:
 By Harvey L. Pitt, Compliance Week Columnist
04/29/08 Columns & Editorials
9. ERM vs. Risk Assessment: An Analysis
Ever wonder what the risk is that you’ve wrongly assessed how you’re supposed to do risk assessments?
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
03/18/08 Compliance Week Coverage
10. Why It’s So Shocking Societe Generale Was Shocked
By now we’ve all seen the headline—“French Bank Rocked by Rogue Trader!”—heralding the debacle at Societe Generale as the largest bank fraud in history.
 By Richard M. Steinberg, Compliance Week Columnist
02/20/08 Columns & Editorials
11. Banks Bring Basel II to Risk Management
As investors around the world cope with the fallout of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States, financial institutions are getting a stern regulatory reminder of the importance of monitoring operational and credit risk, via the implementation of Basel II.
 By Christine Dunn
02/12/08 Compliance Week Coverage
12. Risk Management Falters, and M&A Cools
Mergers and acquisitions have been a mainstay of Corporate America for more than a decade, first as sky-high stock prices and then a flood of private equity gave companies oodles of purchasing power to do deals—the bigger, the better.
 By Elizabeth Judd
02/05/08 Compliance Week Coverage
13. When the Raters Start Rating ERM
If companies outside of the financial services and insurance industries need another reason to care about enterprise risk management, they now have one: It could affect their credit ratings.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
11/13/07 Compliance Week Coverage
14. Building ERM Bridges for Boards, C-Suite
Lots of corporate boards put enterprise risk management on their agenda in some way or another. How to flesh out the details beyond that is anyone’s guess.
 By Kathrine Schmidt
09/11/07 Compliance Week Coverage
15. Spotting FCPA Risks: A Daunting Challenge
Business opportunities abroad can be an entrepreneur’s dream. The risks of corruption and fraud overseas can be a nightmare.
 By Kathrine Schmidt
08/21/07 Compliance Week Coverage
16. Report: ERM Sinking Into Directors’ Heads
Corporate board members are devoting more time to enterprise risk management these days and taking a more aggressive approach to make headway on the sometimes-elusive goal, according to a new survey.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
08/21/07 Compliance Week Coverage
17. Thinking Globally, Acting Locally on ERM
Companies and boards of directors have been managing risk in various forms for a long, long time. It’s managing risk in a unified form that’s vexing them these days.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
08/21/07 Compliance Week Coverage
18. Hedging Against the Untimely Exit of CEOs
Call it heart attack risk: the abrupt, untimely departure of a chief executive officer—which, really, can leave any number of people experiencing chest pains.
 By Caron Carlson
08/21/07 Compliance Week Coverage
19. Proof That Cos. Can Go From SOX to ERM
The stage is set for enterprise risk management. Sarbanes-Oxley forced companies to spend a great deal of time and money demonstrating oversight of financial risk—often to the point of overkill. Now, with new guidance from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s Accounting Standard No. 5, the tectonic shift from bottom-up, cover-your-tail, control-based SOX compliance to top-down, risk-based, strategic compliance officially has been blessed.
 By Todd Neff
08/07/07 Compliance Week Coverage
20. Measuring Non-Financial, Intangible Risks
Much like the homeland security chief’s latest “gut feeling” about an increased risk of a terrorist attack in the United States this summer, some risks facing businesses today can be hard to pinpoint and even harder to quantify.
 By Caron Carlson
07/31/07 Compliance Week Coverage
21. Supplier Risk: Outsourcing To China Can Get Costly
Cheap is very often expensive. That’s the lesson being learned again by companies outsourcing production to China.
 By Richard Meyer
07/31/07 Compliance Week Coverage
22. The Long, Winding Road Of Fraud Probes
Hearing the words “Securities and Exchange Commission” and “investigation” in the same sentence can strike fear in the heart of any corporate executive.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
07/24/07 Compliance Week Coverage
23. What Frauds Are Prevalent, And Preventable
While government officials congratulate themselves for a job well done since establishing the Corporate Fraud Task Force five years ago, experts tell Compliance Week that institutional fraud is still a rampant problem.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
07/24/07 Compliance Week Coverage
24. What Organizations Don’t Want To Know Can Hurt
Like most Compliance Week readers, I read the business press rather extensively and sometimes come across an article that piques my interest. One, the title of which I'm borrowing as the heading of this column, appeared some months ago in The New York Times.
 By Richard M. Steinberg, Compliance Week Columnist
06/19/07 Columns & Editorials
25. Risk Of Piling ERM On The Audit Committee
For many public companies today, observers say, the audit committee is a committee people want to be on. It is now seen not only as the default committee for wide-reaching risk assessments that go beyond mere financial risk, but as the go-to entity for nearly everything that could be a liability for a business.
 By Jabulani Leffall
06/19/07 Compliance Week Coverage
26. Successful ERM Must Go Beyond Financial Risks
If you only consider “risks” to be those of the financial type, you are only confronting the most easily identifiable of threats—and you’re missing many more risks that should be addressed, according to a panel of risk-management experts at Compliance Week 2007.
 By Richard Meyer
06/08/07 Compliance Week Coverage
27. Profile Of A Fraudster: Subtle, Senior, And Stealthy
To anyone who fights white-collar crime, it comes as no surprise that U.S. companies lose an estimated 5 percent of their annual revenues to fraud—about $638 billion last year alone, according to research by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
05/15/07 Compliance Week Coverage
28. Methodologies For Successfully Implementing ERM
This is the last column in the series on enterprise risk management. The first two described the “what” and “why” of ERM—what it actually is, and why companies are using it. The next two highlighted some of the more effective techniques for applying ERM and where executive responsibility for ERM best resides.
 By Richard M. Steinberg, Compliance Week Columnist
04/17/07 Columns & Editorials
29. Automated Controls And Risk Management
Compliance Week and the Open Compliance and Ethics Group continue their “GRC Illustrated” series with a look at controls, monitoring and automation.
 By Scott Mitchell, The Open Compliance And Ethics Group
03/27/07 Columns & Editorials
30. Who Should Have Responsibility For ERM?
In the fourth installment of his five-part series on enterprise risk management, Rick Steinberg, the lead project partner in developing the COSO Internal Control—Integrated Framework, looks at where responsibility and accountability for ERM need to rest.
 By Richard M. Steinberg, Compliance Week Columnist
03/20/07 Columns & Editorials
31. Techniques To Implement ERM Successfully
In his third column on enterprise risk management, Richard Steinberg discusses some of the techniques that companies are using to get optimum benefit from their ERM processes.
 By Richard M. Steinberg, Compliance Week Columnist
02/21/07 Columns & Editorials
32. Why Embrace Enterprise Risk Management?
In the second installment of a series on enterprise risk management, Richard Steinberg explores the “why” of ERM—that is, why companies are moving forward with an ERM initiative, including the impetus for doing so and the benefits it brings.
 By Richard M. Steinberg, Compliance Week Columnist
01/23/07 Columns & Editorials
33. Taking A Holistic View Of Risk And Privacy
Companies looking to purchase technology to assist in compliance efforts increasingly are turning to systems that allow them to implement controls for both governance and privacy regulations.
 By Christine Dunn
01/17/07 Compliance Week Coverage
34. ERM Deconstructed: What It’s Really About
At the risk of putting the cart before the horse, let’s look at some misconceptions of ERM. The reality is that many people use the term—including board members, chief executives and other senior executives, consultants and others—all too often meaning very different things.
 By Richard M. Steinberg, Compliance Week Columnist
12/19/06 Columns & Editorials
35. Making A Case For Integrated GRC
A major challenge—one that has little to do with complex regulations, sensitive governance issues, or looming risks—confronts governance, risk, and compliance professionals: A growing number of GRC professionals must contend with internal pressure to drive down costs and reduce overall spending. Even those who do not face this challenge are being asked increasingly to rationalize their GRC investments.
 By Scott Mitchell, The Open Compliance And Ethics Group
11/28/06 Compliance Week Coverage
36. How Foster Wheeler Managed World Of Risk
When new leadership took the reins in 2002 at engineering and construction giant Foster Wheeler, getting a better grasp on the company’s many risks was a top priority.
 By David Haarmeyer
10/03/06 Compliance Week Coverage
37. The New COSO Guidance: Wisdom For All
COSO—the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission—recently released the long-awaited guidance for small business. It’s designed to help non-accelerated filers and other companies reduce the burdensome costs that have been or would be incurred in dealing with SOX Section 404.
 By Richard M. Steinberg, Compliance Week Columnist
08/22/06 Columns & Editorials
38. The Case For (And Against) Continuous Auditing
The fast pace of business is pressuring internal auditors to speed up their audit cycles and processes, creating momentum for the increased use of “continuous auditing,” according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
 By Christine Dunn
08/08/06 Compliance Week Coverage
39. Directors May Overestimate ERM Expertise
Recent developments have given corporate directors plenty of reasons to pay attention to enterprise risk management, and many are doing so—but they might not be doing as well as they think, according to new research from the Conference Board.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
06/27/06 Compliance Week Coverage
40. Case Study: A Risk-Based Audit At Chevron
With $184 billion in revenue and 59,000 employees in 180 countries, energy giant Chevron Corp. is no stranger to the need for risk management. So when the Sarbanes-Oxley Act came along with its calls for a risk-based approach to assessing internal control over financial reporting, Chevron executives knew just what to do—because they had instituted just such a risk-based system years ago.
 By David Haarmeyer
06/27/06 Compliance Week Coverage
41. Few Companies Monitor Internal Audit Function
Less than 25 percent of corporations are giving their internal audit functions the rigorous external reviews recommended by the Institute for Internal Auditors as a standard of strong corporate governance in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley world, according to a new study.
 By Christine Dunn
06/06/06 Compliance Week Coverage
42. Managing Internal Controls At Joint Ventures
Call it the intersection of convergence and compliance: Companies trying to obey Sarbanes-Oxley’s internal control provisions are finding that not only must they evaluate the controls their own operations—but also those of partners with whom they may form an alliance.
 By Christine Dunn
05/16/06 Compliance Week Coverage
43. The Price Of Poor Controls: 100 Basis Points
Plenty of surveys and studies have tracked the dollars companies are spending to meet the internal control reporting requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley—but less is said or known about any positive effect improved controls might have on a company’s bottom line.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
05/02/06 Compliance Week Coverage
44. Crafting Effective Disclosure, Even When It Hurts
“Information wants to be free” was a phrase bandied about during the Internet stock market bubble. Well, it turns out you get what you pay for. Despite being the so-called mantra of the Internet, the concept that “information wants to be free” was never internalized by the bubble companies that promoted it. Had they told us everything we really needed to know to make an accurate assessment of their performance and future prospects, most of us wouldn’t have invested in sock monkeys!
 By Harvey L. Pitt, Compliance Week Columnist
04/25/06 Columns & Editorials
45. Balancing Risk, Lawsuits And Good ERM
Good enterprise risk management starts with effective detection of risks and early disclosure of the material ones. But determining which risks are material and at what point disclosure is required or advisable is often a judgment call—which means that even the best ERM scheme won’t thwart litigation when a stock price tumbles and angry investors are looking for someone to blame.
 By Paul J. Martinek
03/21/06 Compliance Week Coverage
46. Internal Control, IT Frameworks Converging On ERM
In that vast expanse that still divides the concerns of the CFO and CIO, new efforts to combine the challenges of financial reporting and IT management are emerging—bringing hope that the distance between those two officers is slowly getting shorter.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
03/14/06 Compliance Week Coverage
47. Poor Risk Assessments Can Be Biggest Risk Of All
In an era of unparalleled corporate oversight, senior executives know all too well that assessing risk is an integral part of their compliance obligations—but many companies still leave themselves exposed by failing to identify, address and disclose the myriad potholes that may pop up in a given business, experts say.
 By Paul J. Martinek
02/28/06 Compliance Week Coverage
48. Companies Seeking A Common Language On ERM
Sure, a rose by any other name might smell as sweet—but anyone wanting to call a risk by another name should probably first check with internal audit.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
02/28/06 Compliance Week Coverage
49. Survey: Most Execs Unhappy With Their ERM
Less than 40 percent of senior executives have much faith in their companies’ ability to identify and manage significant risks to their business, according to a recent study by risk-management consultancy Protiviti.
 By Christine Dunn
02/28/06 Compliance Week Coverage
50. Lots Of Talk, Still Not Much Action On ERM
Companies are starting to think more about the risks they face when making business decisions, but they are not yet fully considering those risks during the decision-making process.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
11/22/05 Compliance Week Coverage

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