A local perspective: The LOLC way

LOLC Group Chief Risk Officer Sharmini Wickremasekera, speaking on risk governance and how LOLC accommodates it, stated that for LOLC risk management was part of its culture.

“This sort of culture should be introduced to a company; not haphazardly but starting with identifying the key people, a.k.a. risk managers.

Risk managers should be professionally qualified and should also have strengths such as not feeling bad to say something negative or be able to look at upside risks and comment on how better the organisation could do by looking at investments in a better way.“Sometimes you might have to tread on toes when you do it, you may be instructing a risk taker in the organisation to do the risk taking better; but if the risk management in the organisation happens right, yes, you could make your investment reap better benefits.”

To get such a culture introduced to the organisation, the company should start by getting help from various divisions and business units as well as take everyone as risk managers.

“Survey and business units should be able to look at the risks as well as take the corporate strategies forward; when they are trained to look at risks, there should be a proper framework within the organisation which captures all this. When it comes to risk governance, there should be proper risk management policies, the framework and structures in place to ensure these things happen right. Quarterly integral risk management committee meetings with risk reports being discussed should also be in the plans,” she said.

“Getting information is hard. It’s a nightmare if you don’t have the proper systems in place, so that’s what you need to address.”

LOLC is currently looking at a system for risk management which would be integrated with the systems already in place. The new system will give the indicators and things they would want to further address within the company framework.