Anderson points to data management as a potential hotspot, as the sheer volume of information relevant to risk management lies disparately around organisations; hidden away in emails or locked down in locally-saved Excel spreadsheets. “We’re probably going to see a world where the vast wealth of data that is available to most organisations sitting in their ERP systems is going to have to be reinterpreted from a risk management perspective rather than simply a record of historical transactions,” he warns.

“We may be looking at whole new ways of searching out ‘weak signals’ and identifying trends that are sitting in our data systems somewhere at the moment, but because they don’t get drawn out for analysis in an item in the P&L or balance sheet, they don’t necessarily get identified.

And, he argues, the responsibility for controlling this will land with the finance community.

Culture

Because of this, it pays to embed a culture of risk awareness and management throughout an organisation; an environment where employees of all levels are made aware of the specific risks their individual actions are associated with. This, in turn, can lead to the right information being made available in a straight-forward manner.