What does your risk team need to be great at?

Are you clear on what you need from your risk team?

Throughout in Q4 2020 and H1 2021 we’re looking at risk functions and role clarity for Chief Risk Officers.

What roles they need to be exceptional at right now?

Risk functions mean many things to many people – often within the same organisation.

Lack of clarity on what is essential can lead to underperformance in things that matter and over-investment in things that don’t.

It also can result in recruiting the wrong profiles for the job, and focus being skewed by unintended biases, personalities or skills.

There is no single answer. It varies for each organisation at various points in time.

Alignment on these things is critical and requires vigilance.

Getting clarity for your organisation.

During Q4 2020 and H1 2021 we’re running an initiative to help organisations to get clarity on the priorities for their risk leaders and risk teams.

Our framework contains 16 of the most common priorities for risk functions – shown in light blue below.

TDA clients and Davies Report subscribers can to access a diagnostic survey that goes through each of the 16 elements.

This tool unpacks each of the elements and takes participants through a thought process to understand each area and rank importance and performance.

Participants will also get access to a summary report of our findings as thanks for their participation.

The tool, survey and summary report are free of charge to participants normally valued at A$95.

The tool takes around 9-14 minutes to complete – about the same amount of time required to savour your favourite hot beverage.

Results are confidential. We will only look at specific responses if you wish to go further (see offer below).

This offer is only available to survey participants, so participation is essential.

Additional options for participants

We will also provide options to survey participants to go through their results, individually or as a team.

The individual option: starting at A$495.

  • Personalised reports and comparisons vs benchmark
  • Preliminary action plan on areas to confirm, area to improve
  • Zoom call with Todd to go through the results and practical actions to get confirmation and address gaps

The team option: starting at A$1,950.

  • As above
  • Team or stakeholder version of the survey diagnostic
  • Workshop to go through the results with participants
  • Facilitated session on divergent views
  • Consensus workshop
  • Preliminary forward plan.

A risk maturity process and plan is rarely achieved for under $25,000. Usually more.

These are compressed offers designed to get clarity and a ton of value for low investment.

After you complete the survey and we’ll send you the details. But you need to participate to get these.

To get started fill in your details below and we’ll get you started.

Note: This offer is for current and former clients, Davies Report subscribers and by invitation. If you’re not already in one of those groups and would like to participate, register using the form above and get we’ll add a quick step to get to know you first.


About this initiative

In working with risk functions over the past 12 months it’s become clear to us that the expectations of the modern chief risk officer continue to evolve – often without a clear framework or agreed set of priorities.

Clarity and alignment on priorities is essential.

Changing requirements and changing stakeholders mean that prioritisation and alignment on expectations requires constant vigilance. And to be revisited when circumstances or stakeholders change.

In October we developed this model to help drive clarity for some of our clients.

This model was posted on LinkedIn and has received exceptional feedback from more than 100 risk leaders including CROs from some of the world’s most respected brands. The model has now been viewed and shared more than 13,000 times.

It has been our most viewed and shared piece of content ever, which indicates the burning need for clarity.

Where do maturity models fit?

As we’ve commented over many years, maturity models are prolific.

This is not one of those.

Many are derivatives of the ERM maturity models from the late 1990’s, and work on the premise that:

  • Most things in life can be fixed with an A/NZ 4360 style risk workshop
  • More maturity, process and sophistication will get you where you need to go.

In our experience this is not always so.

Tactics without strategy is a recipe for customer frustration and complexity. It needs to be anchored in purpose and outcomes.

For the reasons above we developed our risk excellence model that shifts from building blocks to outcomes. This gets beyond process and shifts into effectiveness – answering the question of whether the risk investment is delivering results or just more activity, complexity and cost. This is a good step to be done after getting clarity on intent.

But before you go down that path, you need to be clear on what the priorities are, and make sure there is alignment amongst your team and stakeholders, hence the reason for this tool and initiative.

Fill in the form above to get started. It could be the highest return on investment you make this year.

Got a question?

Email us here.