While many financial institutions consider their ‘business as usual’ non-financial risk frameworks to be reasonably mature, insufficient consideration is often paid to managing non-financial risk within transformations – particularly large-scale programs – in today’s fast paced and technology/digital-driven business environment. When it comes to delivering significant transformation programs at pace, financial institutions seldom apply adequate rigor and SME focus when identifying, assessing, or managing their non-financial risk exposures, such as regulatory compliance, financial crime, legal, resilience and cyber. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated increases in the scale and breadth of automation, digitalization and offshoring as well as the reliance on third-party service providers within the industry and has consequently amplified these risks. Recent failures such as the TSB integration have underlined the importance of robust transformation risk management disciplines and the need to avoid customer detriment, regulatory censure and, in some instances, breaches of local law both during and post program implementation. 

In this paper, we outline the key challenges and pitfalls we’ve seen financial institutions experience when managing non-financial risk (in both Agile and Waterfall change deliveries), as well as sharing our recommendations to ensure expedited delivery and robust risk and control management during large scale transformation.

Contact Stephen Watts and Tom Leach to find out more about how Capco can support robust non-financial risk management across your change and transformation programs.