@Risk

While concerns about global economic uncertainty continue to be top of mind for business leaders, other significant issues –such as fraud and ethics, mergers and acquisitions, large programs, new product introductions and business continuity –are emerging to further complicate business strategies and performance.

In fact, according to the new 2012 PwC State of the Internal Audit Profession study, businesses are asking internal audit to play an increased role in helping companies navigate the rapidly changing risk landscape. To illustrate my point, here are a few key findings from the report: (more…)

Many companies aren’t adequately integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues with new SEC requirements, and that’s causing widespread SEC disclosure noncompliance, according to recent research by CSR Insight LLC.

The study, billed as the first independent, comprehensive technical study of how the SEC regime applies to ESG issues found that:

• More than a dozen SEC requirements potentially apply, for 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, and other corporate SEC filings, including narrative disclosure and financial statement requirements, books and records requirements, and management certification requirements.
• There’s a substantial likelihood of widespread corporate noncompliance with one or more of these SEC requirements.

CSR Insight, which is an independent consultancy specializing in analysis of SEC and global financial regulation, global financial regulatory policy, ESG reporting frameworks, ESG capital market issues, and international corporate governance standards,  concluded that the problem is this: (more…)

A group of nine companies is testing newly developed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) designed to assess reputational risks and operational shortcomings associated with labor and human rights factors in corporate supply chains.

Developed as part of the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and Harvard Law School?s Pension and Capital Stewardship Project and with funding from the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC) Institute, this KPI initiative is the first effort of its kind to create a standardized method to assess such risks.

The nine companies involved collectively source from 1,755 factories that employ about 1.8 million workers in 62 countries. They are testing KPIs in the following areas, with a host of detailed underlying information for each category: (more…)

European insurers are racing to meet Solvency II requirements by the January 1, 2014 deadline, and many are facing a stiff head wind, particularly with respect to their reliance on third parties for data, the sophisticated risk modeling requirements and the difficulties associated with obtaining sufficiently detailed fund data.

More specifically, a new study by BNP Paribas Securities Services and InteDelta found that insurers are facing key challenges around: (more…)

The US Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) has proposed a set of recommended best practices to help the pharmaceutical industry improve supply chain integrity and reduce risks of counterfeit or mishandled medicines.

Improvements like these are long overdue. As I reported last spring, research from PwC concluded that many pharmaceutical supply chains have suffered from what amounts to benign neglect. As a result, they are inefficient, under-utilized and ill-equipped to cope with new medicines, cost pressures and health reform expectations.

Sure, in today’s global economy relationships between suppliers and other business entities are often opaque and difficult to track, but clearly, it’s time for the pharmaceutical industry to step up to better ensure that medicines can be traced back to their original manufacturer, are not adulterated or counterfeited and are transported to their intended destination with their quality intact.

Too many companies have discovered the hard way that “willful blindness” only increases their culpability in the eyes of Federal agents, regulators who now are cracking down on businesses that aren’t compliant with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

Don’t take that kind of risk. Resolve that this is the year to start better managing your multiple supplier master databases as you monitor and mitigate supplier risk in a global operating arena.

“There is incentive for all players in the pharmaceutical industry—large and small companies, regulators and standards-setting bodies—to come to some agreement on hotbutton issues such as track and trace technology and, at the larger level, to codify what constitutes a solid, universal approach to global supply chain integrity,” said Praveen Tyle, Ph.D., chief science officer for USP.

USP’s proposed standard covers four main areas: (more…)