Does managing risk mean hitting pause on innovation?

It’s Newton’s first law: A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. Fintech companies are in rapid motion—they’re expanding and moving into areas previously dominated by traditional banks. But when fintech companies neglect, from the start, to make risk management part of their innovation processes, that forward momentum can slow or even screech to a halt.

In some instances, fintech firms are going so fast they can leave themselves open to fraud or security breaches. Additionally, new services may be subject to regulatory and compliance requirements that management might not even realize are necessary. Our client, an established tech company using its platform for fintech expansions, faced several challenges. Not only was it expanding rapidly into new, regulated areas such as money movement, but it recently experienced a large fraudulent transaction and several other fraudulent transactions that were almost paid.

Our client realized identifying potential risks early could prevent, or at least minimize, future events like these from occurring. The client’s compliance function, audit function, and senior leadership agreed they needed to improve and formalize the client’s operational risk management processes. Also, the supporting control environment had to be part of the road map for developing new offerings, not a detour.

We set out to help the client bring its risk and control environment up to speed with its drive to deliver new services and products.