28 November 2011

ECIIA: Auditors vs risk managers

In an exclusive interview with Commercial Risk Europe (CRE) Ms Diettmeier urged companies to define clearly the roles of each risk control activity in order to avoid confusion between the functions. Speaking to CRE at ECIIA’s annual conference,which was hosted in Madrid last week, Ms Diettmeier said: “Risk managers and internal auditors speak a lot to each other and there is no overlapping of their functions.They all want the first level of protection to be working, so they are working on common objectives.” But she conceded that there are still cases where the functions are not clearly defined and synergies are not always well developed. “Internal audit has no desire to encompass the risk management function", Ms Diettmeier assured. “But there can be some transitional confusion, and we need to promote clarity of roles.” Ms Diettmeier said that internal auditors have made some ground in their companies during the recent financial and economic crises. But they still have some way to go to make boards more aware of the need to properly manage risks, she added.

“No crisis is good, but it has been an opportunity for people to reflect quickly or to suffer the consequences. In that sense, internal audit has been given an opportunity to state how important corporate governance is”, she said.

Risk managers that work for insurance companies, for instance, have their hands full with the imminent arrival of Solvency II. “Solvency II is a challenge for us because it goes a step further by establishing that internal audit departments will have to check governance systems too”, said José Manuel Muries, the President of Instituto de Auditores Internos (IAI), Spain’s internal audit association. He believes that this extended role will end up spreading to other sectors of the economy too.

Press release

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