At ECIIA Berlin, BWise and agens Consulting presented their vision on Internal Audit: Internal Audit is an integrated part of GRC
Berlin, November 26 2008 – agens Consulting GmbH, a consulting company specializing in financial management with financial services companies, and BWise, the leading provider of Governance, Risk and Compliance management (GRC) software solutions, presented their vision on Internal Audit within GRC projects during the ECIIA Congres 2008 in Berlin last week. Richard Jansen, BWise area manager of the German region, said ”We are seeing that internal audit departments are getting more and more involved in Internal Control and Risk Management projects. Internal Audit is responsible for the evaluation of the company’s strategy, processes and procedures. They are in the position to discover holes in Internal Control and Risk frameworks. That is why we believe Internal Audit should be an integrated part of a company’s Governance, Risk and Compliance strategy. BWise can support this in a cost effective manner with our software solution.”
agens and BWise work together at several customers. At one of the largest insurance companies in Germany BWise software was implemented to roll out a GRC framework to the organization and to ensure control testing was done in a proper and efficient manner. During the presentation at the ECIIA in Berlin, Hans-Willi Jackmuth, Management Team member at agens Consulting, explained the importance of an integrated approach on GRC. Many international organizations have to comply with several regulations and most of the time they have a solution in place for each regulation. Hans-Willi said “It is not only expensive to maintain all these solutions it is also difficult to create transparency. In some cases many control tests are done more than once for each regulation. With an integrated GRC approach, business and internal audit processes are more transparent and they also help prevent double tasks because tests and evidence are shared or re-used.”
During the presentation, seven steps to come to a successful GRC strategy and implementation were explained. This GRC Methodology is derived from best practice methodologies like COSO, AS/NZ 4360 and TQM/EFQM, and has been translated into easy-to-adapt and implement steps. All steps in the methodology are supported by the BWise GRC solution.
As a pre-requisite, the GRC environment needs to be in proper order, including integrity and ”tone-at-the-top.”
1. Starting point are the objectives of the company
2. Which risks threaten those objectives?
3. How important are these risks?
4. What do we do with these risks? (Take, Treat, Transfer, or Terminate)
5. Which processes & controls mitigate the risks?
6. Constantly monitor risks and controls
7. Analyze & Improve processes, risks and controls
Within each step communication is very important, communicate about the risks, the controls and their corresponding policies and procedures.
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About BWise
BWise is the global leader in Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) management software, with a strong heritage in business process management. Established in 1994, BWise delivers proven solutions to help organizations become “in control” by increasing corporate accountability; strengthening financial, strategic and operational efficiencies; and maximizing performance and ROI. With more than 300,000 users in more than 80 countries worldwide in virtually all markets, BWise has developed a strong and sustainable presence in the GRC sector. Utilizing templates and a best-practice implementation approach, BWise enables stakeholders to measure and manage risks and to comply with rules and legislation throughout their organization. Our customers are managing multiple risk-related and compliance initiatives such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Solvency II, Basel II, MiFID, PCI, GLBA, and others. BWise has offices in the Netherlands, United States, United Kingdom, Germany and India.
About Agens:
The agens Consulting GmbH was started in 1977 in Quickborn near Hamburg, initially as a consulting company providing auditing services and seminars. The initial projects, which were of a business management character in the insurance sector, were followed by projects in bank management, controlling and refinancing.
agens Consulting concentrates on financial management. As a neutral Management and IT Consultant, we execute projects in the fields of organization and IT, in a responsible and success oriented manner.
Our business is spread mainly over German speaking territories and countries in Central Eastern Europe. Regardless of their size and volume of business, our customers are banks and insurance companies, as well as mortgage banks, leasing firms, special credit institutions and others.
The business activities range from consulting to implementation: Auditing, Management Consulting, Actuarial Consulting, Change Management and IT Conceptualization and Implementation. We are able to achieve special added value for our customers through our own benchmarking and staff appraisal values derived from the core and supporting processes of financial institutions. Detailed blueprints of financial management processes and technical architectures speed up the consulting process. Through a combination of the core competencies of our staff with our long-standing experience in the field, we are in a position to design and implement extremely complex proposals.
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