The Operational Risk Management

Despite the strengthening of regulations on risk management in recent years, the banking sector could not avoid. Subprime crisis, which by contagion has affected the rest of the economy, has highlighted the fragility of the various devices to control risks in force in the financial institutions, rating agencies and supervisors of financial markets. This weakness was also reflected in internal fraud which cost Society General 4.9 billion Euros.

It follows from these two major events the observation that the advent and implementation of new regulations do not allow companies to be fully exempt from risk factors to the origin of these losses. Indeed, recent actions by U.S. authorities to strengthen the financial sector by extending the powers of the Federal Reserve Bank and the European ideas and initiatives can only be effective if the various players take full ownership of their system risk management.

Appropriating the device operational risk management is putting in place a structured approach marked by a number of essential steps which include:

This is to define a framework that sets out the principles and rules of the potential risks have been shown to affect the company (benchmarks, risk governance committee ...). Indeed, the different activities and policies initiated by the company to expose operational risks can generate losses. These risks can be understood only with the establishment of a true corporate culture. The policy of operational risk management is the first step of this investment after the definition of its risk profile. It must be in perfect harmony with the various regulations, including Basel II, which involves the establishment of a regulatory monitoring for a regular update of this policy.

Finally the definition of a policy of operational risk management must be built in the same priority as commercial actions to prevent deterioration in the performance of the company.

Operational Efficiency Maximization

The search for sources of operational efficiency is generally only addressed through the analysis process. This approach is now well understood by operational staff. It also allows you to link to the Planning of IS which is also based on the description of the process.

This approach processes seek to identify redundancies, gaps, points of blocks. However, the search for sources of operational efficiency should also focus on service delivery to customers, whether operational or project: What are the services provided to date? What are the extensions of the scope that would significantly enhance service delivery and to benefit a greater number of actors (for example by integrating an operation today at the expense of clients)?

We also seek activities that have a characteristic position in relation to the concentrations of three assets:

* Information:
o dealer or a producer of information (focus information)
o interface or distributor of key information (broker positioning information)
* Means:
o holds a treatment capacity of computer or human (average concentration)
* Expertise:
o special expertise (concentration of expertise)


The presence of one of these assets is not enough to be a center of operational efficiency. However, from a couple of them, it will then be possible to change the activity to achieve a complete positioning. For example, concentrations are repositories of information. Develop the application infrastructure to manage this information and strengthen the expertise associated will then disseminate information on a larger scale and with better quality. This significantly raise the value added of the activity management repositories. This concentration of information and make changes to this perspective, therefore this activity subject to the establishment of a center of operational efficiency.

Another complementary approach is possible and easily accessible: mapping generic opportunities for sharing and industrialization will most frequently be used to initiate the search for sources of operational efficiency. This will be considered first and best practices in the sector and identify whether the existing organization is likely to reap the gains quickly.

The development of operational efficiency

The development of operational efficiency is a major concern of the major banking groups. This translates into at the moment through the consolidation of existing services in unique organizational entities in the Group. The aim is to reduce costs while improving the consistency, quality services and ultimately increase the operational efficiency of the entire organization.

However, the real centers of specialized operational efficiency (making the concentration of the three asset expertise, information and resources on a given field of activity) are not yet implemented only in a very ad hoc.
To develop such centers of operational efficiency, it is first necessary to identify relevant activities to concentrate in these clusters, so that they can then grow in terms of gains expertise, knowledge, productivity. Allowing them to have a real impact on the operational effectiveness of the Bank's medium term.



The establishment of centers of operational efficiency can significantly increase the operational efficiency of the entire Bank and facilitate response to the need for continuous development (see previous article in this blog). However, we must first identify the activities that could constitute sources of operational efficiency.

As we mentioned above, will be sought primarily in activities that allow centralization of three assets: information, expertise and resources. Joint ownership of these three assets pave the way for a wider range of services on the perimeter of activity. This offer will consist of both services 'operational' and services for projects. The problem is then to identify and evaluate the essential features of the future organization activities among distributed so far among multiple services or multiple entities.

Poles Of Operational Efficiency

Reduce the complexity of the development process: the poles of operational efficiency offer a range of services already in operation that are available to any entity by changing its processes. They are also available for personal service and dedicated to the support of development projects of other entities.
Increase and ensure quality of service: the service being delivered by a single entity, it will necessarily become generic, a common service level, so that gains of scale is generated. The range of services will be standardized at a level of quality and availability corresponding to the highest common denominator of user needs and guaranteed service agreements.
Reduce the overall cost of service delivery involved: the production cost of the service may be reduced by centralizing certain ways. However, changes will be especially noticeable in the final cost of use for each entity.
Increase the scope of use by allowing new entities to access the range of services: entities whose size did not develop these services in-house entities that had a similar service but with fewer resources and little adapted ...
Maintain the consistency and quality of information: the centralization of information management on a particular area will help to oversee the entire process of managing this information. It also allows perceiving the diversity of uses and coordinating accordingly.
Manage the evolution continues in a consistent manner on the different scope of responsibility of the poles: being at the heart of development projects and in contact with all clients on the perimeter, they are aware of the multiplicity of needs and include it in the trajectories of change in their activities.

Governance and Management of Operational Efficiency

To ensure consistency of objectives and day to day 
developments, it is necessary to develop a unique control of the entire work area operationally and in terms of its development (projects). Cells respond directly support the daily needs of internal customers will be directly attached to the same manager as the study of cell changes (service projects) and project management.
Besides coordination facilitated the centralization of information on operational activity will also provide indicators for monitoring the activity complete and advanced.
The establishment of centers contributing to the development of operational efficiency of the organization

The division of operational efficiency can significantly increase the operational efficiency of any Bank by reducing the complexity of the process, facilitating the evolution of organizations, reducing the overall cost of the activity level of service or greater .
This structure also facilitates the response to the need for continuous development [1], ensuring consistency in its scope, and contributing directly to facilitate the work of projects and developments of its clients through its dedicated service and expertise.

For the pole reaches these goals, it will first identify the activities conducive to a centralized asset value and define the services 'operational' and 'projects' to enlist the broader scope of users. The identification, definition, implementation and establishment of the trajectory of evolution of the cluster operational efficiency will require to use an approach to take into account all the dimensions (budget, governance, expertise, information, human resources, IT etc.