Build an agile risk management infrastructure that responds quickly to geopolitical tension

Author Sarah Ingwersen
June 16, 2014

Recently, the Taylor Root team attended IQPC Exchange – Corporate Counsel and Compliance Exchange UK where we experienced a great panel session on ‘Building an agile risk management infrastructure that can respond quickly to geopolitical tension’.

The session was expertly facilitated by Matt Gould, ContractPodAi and featured the panellists:

Dara Fernandez Perez – General Counsel, Trade Sanctions Honeywell, Christopher Greig-Bonnier – Head of Commercial Contracts, UK&E Serco
Cecilia Locati FCMA,CGMA,CFE – Director of Risk & Compliance – Halma plc

The key takeaways for General Counsel and compliance professionals from their session:

  • Russian sanctions have forced businesses to be incredibly resilient in terms of risk management. Legal and compliance teams have been forced to have a knowledge of their business that they hadn’t before. The level of regulatory updates has forced lawyers to be resilient and understand business better
  • The landscape of sanctions has forced in-house lawyers to have a broader strategic assessment. Lawyers can no longer talk about legal risk in an isolated way
  • Crisis test processes i.e continuity planning, decision-making, simplification of communication. As leaders in risk management, General Counsels have a responsibility to remember that things that might come naturally to them don’t necessarily apply to the business. This is an opportunity to raise business colleagues’ awareness Conduct a risk assessment on the ground and have conversation with the business face-to-face in order to manage risk, regardless of the industry
  • The key is to enabling your business to manage risk is to put yourself in the shoes of the business people managing the risk
  • Knowing that there isn’t a perfect communication strategy for risk management is key. Make sure there is a good understanding of risk and that there is a culture of awareness, compliance & risk management. What is the corporate culture and how is this conducive to risk management?
  • Reputational risk is not a nice to have; it’s an intrinsic part of a company’s corporate culture. Reputational risk isn’t easy to measure and quantify


If you would like to discuss the topic further or would like hiring or career advice, please reach out to Sarah Ingwersen.

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