Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) programs are essential for financial services organizations to effectively navigate complex regulatory environments, manage risks, ensure compliance, protect their assets and reputation, build stakeholder confidence, and promote long-term sustainability.
Yet, many financial services institutions have disjointed GRC functions that don’t talk to each other, speak different languages, and require multiple systems for reporting and data access.
By using Workiva’s powerful platform to integrate governance, risk management, and compliance into core business processes, organizations can enhance their resilience, competitiveness, and success in an ever-evolving business, economic, and regulatory industry.
Here are three ways Workiva can be used to integrate GRC for Financial Services:
When GRC functions are disjointed, each function sets its own risk criteria and definitions, which can limit understanding when sharing across departments of the enterprise risk exposure.
With proper implementation, Workiva can be used to establish one taxonomy, one set of risk measurement definitions, and a common understanding of risk exposure and impact to the organization. So whether you are the Chief Compliance Officer, Chief Risk Officer, or the Board of Directors, the same language is being used in every context and across functions.
Clearview Group works with organizations to establish and define a governance structure. This includes creating clearly defined roles and responsibilities, assigning ownership of decision making, and defining the oversight of each element of the GRC program and the three key governance areas first line: operations, second line: monitoring/testing, and third line: validation and attestation.
Many financial service institutions engage in manual data tracking, examination, and consolidation following an internal audit or compliance testing to pinpoint the areas of operations that present the highest risk exposure.
With Workiva’s Audit Management tool, audit or testing results can be accessed seamlessly by the governance teams and can be customized to fit your organization’s exact needs. For example, laws and regulations are imposed on various institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of operations and the protection of consumers. These organizations must ensure that they are meeting the requirements of the applicable laws and regulations through a testing/validation and reporting process. Let us help you configure Workiva’s Audit Management solution to meet those testing and reporting needs for applicable stakeholders.
When stakeholders are enabled to leverage expertise and perspectives across the organization, they are more comfortable providing feedback and raising concerns to help manage operational effectiveness while promoting a compliant culture.
Manual reporting and isolated data sharing can cause unnecessary delays to your internal processes and limits insight across GRC functions.
By housing your GRC functions under the Workiva platform and applying enhanced automation and data sharing measures, compliance results are expedited and the speed to corrective resolution increased. Within the issues management repository, the various governance functions are able to consolidate issues or inefficiencies (e.g., Internal Audit findings, Compliance findings, IT findings, etc.). This consolidation provides executive management with a full picture of the business areas that need enhancements. Organizational management is then able to determine the highest priority areas to invest in making improvements, such as the most critical operations or areas that present higher than acceptable levels of risk exposure.
Additionally, automation can be used to streamline communication, workflows, and documentation collection and enhances risk assessment execution and collection of results.
By using Workiva's integrated data management and reporting capabilities, financial services institutions can enhance their GRC functions and proactively identify and address problem areas related to governance, risk, and compliance, ultimately ensuring the stability and regulatory compliance of the institution and increasing communication and insights for all stakeholders.
To get started with Workiva, contact Scott Freinberg.
We are a full-service management consulting and CPA firm covering all aspects of audit, compliance, risk management, accounting, finance, tax, IT risk, and more. Just let us know what you need help with and an expert will be in touch!
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