COVID-19 has exposed many vulnerabilities and created many new ones which risk managers must grapple with. From employee physical and mental wellbeing, to supply chain risk in a world where border travel is restricted, to digital innovation in a hardening market, to the ever-present threat of cyber attacks – these are all the things risk managers need to monitor.

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Executive Summary

In order to limit the spread of Covid-19 in workplaces, managers must ensure that employees are comfortable disclosing their risk. A potential solution, is to implement “random rotation” policies in the workplace. Random rotation ensures that workers who report exposure maintain plausible deniability vis à vis coworkers and direct managers. An employee being sent home can plausibly argue that he or she was unwillingly randomly-selected. Through this channel, workers concerned that they may be sick can safely ask to temporarily isolate. The cost of…

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For even the most seasoned of directors, the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought a pace of change — and a level of economic and societal uncertainty — unlike anything they’ve experienced in their careers.

This May, PwC surveyed corporate directors about how their boards and their companies have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 250 public company directors offered their views on their own performance and that of their management teams, as well as potential future impacts of the pandemic.

While few companies planned for disruption of this scope, it was heartening to see a wide majority of directors praising management’s early-stage response.

• More than 95 percent of directors surveyed say their companies did a good or excellent job of dealing with issues such as interruptions in internal operations and supply chain disruptions.
• About 98 percent of directors say their companies did a good or excellent job managing the transition to remote work, and 97 percent said the same about the handling of employee relations overall.
• Even with the demands of board service increasing and meetings having no choice but…

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How the banking sector chooses to respond to the significant impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will have a major influence on how the financial system evolves over the next decade.

The pandemic has posed significant challenges to both our economy and the financial system as a whole. We expect it will take some time before we see a full recovery, Reserve Bank – Te Pūtea Matua Deputy Governor and General Manager of Financial Stability Geoff Bascand said in a speech delivered today.

“New Zealand’s financial sector has proved resilient to the dual health and economic shocks and indeed, supported the business and household sectors through strong business continuity arrangements, the accommodation of many customers through the restructuring of borrowing terms, and only a relatively modest tightening of lending standards.

“A financial crisis and ‘credit crunch’ on top of an economic crisis would be hugely disruptive for New Zealanders’ wellbeing. The ability of financial institutions to absorb shocks, accept risk and continue lending in the face of shocks is foundational to our regulatory framework.”

Banks entered the crisis having built up strong capital and…

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Executive Summary

As businesses begin to re-open offices, they must take steps to contain the spread of the Coronavirus. Doing so will require more than just creating distance and barriers between people. It will require an understanding of the networks of people and the networks of people and objects they interact with.

The virus can be transmitted along two types of paths, a person-to-person one, and a person-to-object or place-to person one. Simply reducing the number of paths does not maximize risk reduction. Two companies may reduce the same number of transmission paths…

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StarCompliance recently completed a market survey of compliance professionals from across the world of finance, asking questions we believe got at the heart of the unexpected and continuing challenges surrounding keeping individual employees and firms compliant in the new normal of remote work.

The survey garnered responses from more than 160 firms, running the gamut in size from less than 200 to more than 10,000 employees. Firm types included asset managers, private equity, broker-dealers and investment banks. Regions surveyed included North America (NA), EMEA and APAC.

The full report goes into great detail on the survey’s findings and also incorporates insights and commentary from the team at Star. Following are a few findings we felt we had to share:

1. More Requests, More Reviews

Across all four geographic regions, 43 percent reported the biggest challenge overall was handling employee requests. By employee size, the largest firms also noted this as their top challenge. It makes sense that more employees mean more requests, and the data bears this out: On average, 36 percent of the firms with…

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