Risk Culture

An organisation’s culture is everything from day-to-day operations to the highest level of decision making. Risk culture is no different. A strong risk culture helps to deliver better business and customer outcomes for organisations.

What is risk culture?

Risk culture refers to the behaviours, attitudes and norms in an organisation that affect how risks are considered in decision making.

Organisations with a strong risk culture foster transparency and considered decision making. They have long-term performance and incentive structures which make them more resilient, and they encourage staff to ‘speak up’ when they see potential issues. Conversely, organisations with a poor risk culture encourage short term decision making which ultimately results in issues, incidents, and wrongdoing.

For the Boards of APRA regulated entities, understanding the organisation’s risk culture is also a regulatory obligation.

Amstelveen’s Risk Culture Framework

We examine the following 6 dimensions of organisational behaviour when assessing an organisation’s risk culture.

Priorities

The relative level of consideration given to risk against other priorities within the organisation.

Leadership

The degree in which leaders communicate consistently and clearly, identifies the importance of strong risk management.

Accountability

The extent to which members of the organisation consider identifying and addressing risks and issues to be their responsibility.

Capability

The ease with which individuals can identify and address the risks related to their role.

Transparency

The extent to which communication is open and honest, and information within the organisation is complete, factual and balanced.

Motivation

The degree to which internal recognition and reward structures provide adequate consideration for positive risk behaviours.

An approach that works for you

Choose the support approach that best suits your needs. You can choose from a low-cost self-service option right through to a fully supported model, where Amstelveen experts facilitate workshops and can help you plan for any uplift that may be required.

Your Risk Culture journey begins here

Whether you’re new to risk culture or a seasoned professional, Amstelveen’s team of Risk Culture experts is here to help you and your organisation on your risk culture journey.