Can you please give us an idea of the sort of work your team has done recently?

I provide for shared ownership of risk management and better coordination of risk prioritisation across the company. One of my responsibilities is to ensure designing and delivering a framework to help my organisation embed compliance and ethical behavior standards in business processes while enabling performance and growth. Monitoring regulatory and industry trends and changes in order, in my role as a strategic advisor, I focus on existing and emerging risks, partnering constructively with the businesses and functions to implement strong processes, establish effective controls, and foster a culture of compliance. To be exact, I directly engage with the top executives in my organisation to help identify, communicate, and address emerging risks such as business growth, employee compliance, corporate functions compliance, organisation transformation and leadership.

Which recent political, economic or regulatory changes have impacted the company and the team the most?

If we put economic challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic aside, I believe that the top three regulatory areas giving me most concern are data protection, competition or anti-trust and employment related matters. Considering the next five to ten years, I believe the increase in the volume and complexity of regulation, increase in the complexity of contractual arrangements, data security issues and reputational risk will pose a slight to strong risk. Such an increase in momentum and complexity of regulation requires me and my team to commit extra time to ensure regulatory compliance with different regulatory regimes, investigations, and disputes. Accordingly, deep involvement in day-to-day operations of the organisation and collaboration of other departments to better understand the way of doing business, creation of best practices to mitigate risks, and design savings solutions would be needed for change management. It is not possible to have perfect prediction for the future impact of such challenges, however, taking calculated risks after taking all measures becomes vital for the organisation’s vision and strategic decision-making progress.

What do you think are the biggest risks facing your industry at the moment and how are you preparing your company and team to face these risks?

I believe that the biggest risks and threats that we face are regulatory changes, data protection or privacy, team burnout and anxiety, siloes and financial crises. Embracing the challenges decisively, we analyse past incidents to anticipate future risks. In cooperation with the top management, we try to put mindset supported by effective communication to find solutions to the risks and to work more collaboratively with colleagues in other lines of business. We do our best to hire rigorous people who engage with the business metrics and requirements together with the emerging trends and try to find ways of effectively solving issues.