First Fondene meet risk and incident management challenges with Optial SmartStart GRC solution
First Fondene, an investment management company based in Oslo needed a Risk and Incident Management solution that was not only cost effective, but provided consistent and complete data capture, was easy-to-use and provided effective out-of-the-box board and management reporting. Their existing solution for Risk and Incident Management was excel-based tracking and reporting - which was proving to be challenging and time consuming.
Their selection process considered several vendors and the final decision to procure Optial was based on the close alignment of the Optial off-the-shelf GRC solution, SmartStart, to their requirements and value for money.
The Optial SmartStart solution provides organisations with out-the-box, easy to use GRC and Audit functionality. The solution is available as independent modules that organisations can select to meet their requirements.
Modules and Functionality
The modules and functionality for SmartStart that are in use by First Fondene are:
Incident Management
Incident Management enables businesses to capture and track incidents across their business. Incidents can be categorised and given priority to facilitate reporting, and slicing and dicing of data by event types, business lines and organisation.
o Operational loss and near miss events
o Corrective and preventative action management
o Reporting
Operational Risk
The Operational Risk solution enables businesses to perform point-in-time risk assessments on risks to the business. Activities and/or actions that are related to the assessment are also included in this module which allows businesses to generate risk registers and other essential reporting related to their assessments.
Risk Appetite statements and alignment to Strategic and Business objectives can be captured and aligned to risk metrics for additional analysis.
o Objectives
o Risk Appetite & metrics
o Risk registers
o Risk assessments
o Indicators
o Reporting
Implementation
The implementation for First Fondene was quick and simple, using the Optial hosted service to deliver the solution and with a short training session to handover before going live. First Fondene uploaded historical data using the application interface to enhance trend data for Loss Events.
Tom Tusvik of First Fondene said “SmartStart gives us an opportunity to have all operational compliance issues in one system and provides us with ease of registration, risk assessment workshops and reporting to board and management.”
About First Fondene
First Fondene is a mutual fund management firm based in Oslo, Norway. The company offers a range of equity, fixed income and multi-asset funds in addition to discretionary management. The management team follow an active management philosophy that permeates from their bond and equity selection process to their allocation strategy. To find out more about First Fondene please visit www.firstfondene.no