Audit, Risk, Compliance & Controls
Over the past 15 years, and more acutely in the last two to three years, the roles of top leaders in audit, risk, compliance, and controls have evolved dramatically. These executives now sit at the forefront of every organization—whether in a regulated industry or not. Risk, controls, and related areas are among the largest enablers or inhibitors of growth in modern business, requiring talent with highly technical skills but also the ability to wield opinions and influence across platforms. Today’s chief risk officers, chief compliance officers, chief auditors, and chief control officers serve as strategic partners to the business, working closely with the board, regulators, and other stakeholders to move business objectives forward and affect change.
Heidrick & Struggles has the largest global group of partners dedicated to audit, risk, controls, and compliance, spanning multiple continents. We have worked closely together to define and redefine organizational structures and identify and integrate the higher level of talent needed for success across the spectrum of financial services—banking, payments, asset management, insurance, hedge funds, alternative assets, and others—and outside of that space. Whether assessing current C-level talent or identifying the right next-generation leadership, we have the knowledge, tools, and insights to help.
Attracting and retaining the next generation of risk leaders
As financial services firms face an unprecedented and volatile mix of risks, nine considerations will help them identify and develop the risk leaders they’ll need to be future-ready.
based on our analysis of the top 35 global banks by assets, excluding China, as of November 2023.
Creating a more gender-diverse risk function
Firms can attract, retain, and develop a more gender-diverse risk function by developing more thoughtful policies and processes and building a more inclusive risk culture.
Succession Planning with talent focused less on remediation and more on problem solving. Can come from other functional areas including operations, technology, finance, and audit.
Recruiting high performing talent to the organization and investing in their development providing stretch opportunities and mentorship.
Increasing focus on operational risk and technology risk as firms utilize new technologies including artificial intelligence and machine learning. Challenges with testing and monitoring operational risk as well.
Understanding the evolving regulatory environment and demonstrating a proactive approach and ability to communicate how those changes impact the business.
Finding opportunities to embed analytics and AI into the risk function to gain credibility with stakeholders and automate processes.
Finding opportunities to place strong leaders in regions with immature risk programs where they can lead a transformation and build teams locally to succeed them.
There is a demand for capital and liquidity risk talent following lack of confidence in capital reserves earlier this year.