The words "corporate governance" conjure images of isolated decision-makers and wood-panelled boardrooms, far removed from the rough-and-tumble world of day-to-day business. Today, this image is fast becoming obsolete. Rising demands for corporate accountability and transparency, e-commerce, and new information technologies are all propelling governance out of the boardroom and into the business mainstream. Economic uncertainty can pressure a company to inflate its earnings, engage in questionable or unethical sales tactics, and otherwise manipulate the expectations of analysts, creditors, investors, customers, and other corporate stakeholders. And countering such short-sighted activities and preserving a company's long-term objectives requires more than good intentions and the threat of an audit—it requires an effective compliance programme. But, effective governance transcends mere compliance, and the prevention and detection of fraud. It is also about tackling untrustworthy information flows, communication breakdowns and not have a sufficient grasp of the risks a company has to face. The fact is that the governance, risk, and compliance processes of a properly managed company should always be of the highest-quality, and those processes must help management understand and manage its risks on an enterprise-wide basis.
If this is your situation
- You need to advise on Board and management performance and accountability.
- You want to embed governance into the organisation.
- You have to make informed risk taking, growth, innovation and development/options selection.
- You would like advice on insurance, self-insurance, risk financing and hedging policy and practices.
- You want to manage processes and mitigate inherent business risk.
- You have an ever growing list of rules and regulations to comply with.
- You want to free up valuable resource by delayering add-on risk and compliance processes.
- You need to reduce the incidents of failure.
- You require reliable and available data for internal and external reporting.
- You need to identify and address complaints and breaches of legislation and internal processes.
- You must reduce the incidents of failure.
- You would like to improve stakeholder and regulator relationships and communication.
How PwC can help you
At PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) can help you to identify, understand and manage risks, both upside and downside. Our experienced professionals can help you build forward looking governance and compliance programmes, and give you’re the means of controlling compliance infrastructures, and measuring and monitoring ongoing governance and compliance practices. In fact, at PwC we can even create a strategic and operational framework that will enable you to identify and head off problems before they turn into costly disasters. And, our approach will also help compliance become a true partner in your business—one that shares best practices with employees, acts as management’s sounding board, and explains to the entire company what can be done as well as what can’t. Granted, effective compliance will never be a low-cost proposition. But can you really afford to get it wrong? We’ll help you get it right.
