'Better planning helps reduce business risks'

Senior partner of BDO, Indonesia, Phil Leifermann, has said that the enterprise risk management is already international best practice and is implemented by many of the world's leading organisations with positive and tangible results.
He was speaking at a seminar on "Managing Risk," organised by Management Association of Pakistan (MAP) at a local hotel on Thursday. He said that risk could be reduced through better planning and by the implementation of policy, organisation, methodology, system, procedures and training.
He stressed the need for developing the enterprise risk management policy, including charter, objectives, responsibilities and techniques. To support the policy, enterprise risk management organisation, including organisational chart and job descriptions should be developed, he suggested.
He said enterprise risk management methodology, including risk control assessment, risk indicators and loss events, was necessary to support policy and organisation and an enterprise risk management system must be developed to support policy, organisation and methodology.
He said that an enterprise risk management procedure should also be developed to support system and enterprise risk management training should be conducted for risk managers, risk owners ie representatives of head office business units and branches or other locations to support system and procedures.
He said that risk control assessment, risk indicators and loss events were the main tools, and added the internal audit was a powerful tool for good governance and this could be helpful to reduce risks. Speaking on the occasion, MAP's Executive Director Farooq Hassan said that the risk management industry had seen a tremendous surge in interest in measuring and managing risk.
This outpouring was a result of regulatory developments in corporate governance and capital adequacy, and a growing realisation that an enterprise-wide view of risk management was simply good business, he added. Risk came in many guises, he said, and added there was country risk, business risk, financial risk, liquidity risk, etc. He said that realising the significance of the issue, the MAP had invited one of the most professionally articulate persons to address this seminar.
About the speaker, he said, Phil Leifermann was a senior partner with BDO, Indonesia, where he specialised in providing management assurance, consulting services in the Asia Pacific region, including corporate governance, risk management, internal audit and IT security. The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) advisor, Dr Mumtaz, also spoke on this occasion, while a number of participants from different companies of corporate sector attended the seminar.