By Shamial Afzal, Head of Supplier Risk Management (SRM), M&G Prudential
Can you please tell the Risk Insights readers a little bit about yourself, your experiences and what your current professional focus is?
I currently head up the Supplier Risk Management (SRM) agenda for M&G Prudential. This Includes setting the tone and methodology on the way we manage our supply chain and identifying key risks and issues.
I have worked across a number of financial services Institutions and have focused on supply chain management for the past 10 years.
Proud father of two girls who keep me very busy!
What, for you, are the benefits of attending a conference like Vendor & Third Party Risk Europe 2019 and what can attendees expect to learn from your session?
So for me the networking and opportunity to learn what others are doing in this space is invaluable. I had the opportunity to talk at last years conference and since then I have kept up good level of communication with my peers from other organisations that have helped me and my supplier risk management agenda.
You can expect a lot of valuable content and some great follow up solutions on offer from a number of providers in this space.
In your opinion, how can financial institutions look to effectively understand where the risks lie?
Engaging at the right level and working with multiple stakeholders across key business areas allow you to understand and bring forward potential risks and Issues.
Identifying those who are closest to 3rd parties and working alongside them and supporting them asking the right questions to determine what risks may lie underneath.
What are the key considerations that need to be made when aggregating risk across the institution?
For me its making sure you identify what the key measures and thresholds the firm is most interested in i.e Customer, Financial, Business Impact etc this then allows you to aggregate against these measures and be able to demonstrate current state.
What challenges and opportunities could arise from aligning with risk appetite?
Depending on when risk appetite statement was written the firms approach and dependency on 3rd parties may have changed and what was acceptable a couple of years ago may not be acceptable today.
An opportunity to refresh and align the risk appetite vs the firms dependency on 3rd parties would be a good exercise to undertake as this could show you emerging risks from areas of business that you may not have considered before.
How do you see the impact of vendor & third party risk evolving over the next 6-12 months?
For me this is top of the house risk for many firms – as more and more institutions rely on 3rd parties and the outsourcing agenda on the increase it has become very clear that vendor and 3rd party risk needs to be invested and developed further with the appropriate support and visibility across institutions.
