smart overview_esg risk

© InvestAssure 2015 [email protected]

SMART Management and Assurance of ESG Risks

Managing ESG risks across networks can be complex and costly. Whether you are

concerned with supply chains, investment portfolios or customer bases, there is a need

to: 1. Communicate; 2. Assess Compliance; 3. Improve Performance; and 4. Deliver

Assurance.

Each of these steps presents huge challenges for corporate managers. InvestAssure’s

SMART provides an online platform for cost-effectively easing the process, enabling

flows of information between managers at corporate and asset levels who need to

drive, implement and be assured of compliance and risk management.

Simple, Logical, Intuitive

SMART has been developed with these three criteria as drivers. We have seen from

decades of business consulting and assurance that simple tools are most rapidly

adopted and flexible to future change. The workflow fits logically with the typical risk

management and assurance process. The user interface builds upon the natural

intuition to read, understand, test and plan. Instead of relying on separate PDFs,

databases and spreadsheets, SMART users can use a single platform to plug into a

shared process for management and assurance of risks.


Modular Structure to Reflect Management and Assurance Framework

SMART is structured to reflect the many ways in which organisations address business

risk management and assurance. At its heart, lies the concept of ‘reference modules’,

the framework which most organisations use as a reference point for setting

performance expectations, monitoring compliance and assessing overall progress.

These may be corporate or industry codes of practice, international standards, etc.

Reference modules provide a common point of access to SMART for all users, whether

for operational support, assurance or strategic analyses and decision making. They can

be populated with customised guidance and self-assessment questionnaires, allowing

the user to set out compliance and improvement programmes. More generic topic or

risk modules can provide support for operational performance improvements.

Web Platform with Customised Sharing and Security Options

SMART is web based, avoiding the need for application downloads and allowing all

content to be centrally maintained for instant user access. It also enables sharing of

data within user-defined SMART share groups, up-to-date access to guidance, e-learning

links and benchmarking. Users can opt for offline data storage to respond to corporate

security concerns. Data-sync options respond to any problems with remote internet

access.


1. Communicate and Inform

Each registered user is given online access to the organisation’s SMART space, which

can include its policies, codes, operational requirements and support tools. SMART

presents a hierarchical series of modules and sub-modules to reflect a set of principles,

or a risk register, expectations, requirements, etc. These are accessed via expandable

menus.

Every screen on SMART has a Help link to show associated explanatory notes and

operational guidance from any source - corporate libraries, the web, regulators,

independent experts. SMART can be fully customised with text, graphics and audio-

visual content.

Central management of shared information on the SMART platform allows updates to

be made instantly available to all participating assets and business partners. These may

be explanatory notes, supporting guidelines, operational standards, regulatory

requirements, new web resource links and so on, in text or multi-media formats.


2. Assess Compliance

SMART makes it easy for businesses to self-assess against the corporate requirements,

using a flexible, powerful, multiple-choice questionnaire tool. This provides a quick

snapshot of overall and detailed compliance across the various expectations of the

corporate code. This function of SMART can be used at two general levels.

A ‘lite’ version, for a self-assurance process, allows the user to simply rate

their compliance with specific clauses of a corporate code.

To support a more thorough improvement and assurance process, a series

of auditor style questions can be developed for each clause of a code,

probing the governance, management system and past performance record.

The assessment system allows questions to be customised individually in terms of

weighting and scoring. This enables considerable flexibility in the phrasing of questions

to be used. Clarification of questions and guidance on how to answer can be made

available both via individual help sheets and information ‘hover boxes’.


3. Improve Performance

SMART can be used to support performance improvement against a set of corporate

expectations. The SMART self-assessment tool allows the user the option of documenting

current state of compliance and improvement actions in relation to each corporate

expectation or assessment question.

These improvement actions can be prioritised and expanded with responsibilities and

timescales, to create comprehensive improvement management plans.

Self-assessment/audit scores can optionally be rolled up across each module or sub-module

for benchmarking against others in a SMART share group. This can be useful for individual

facilities and also for corporate managers, analysts and audit managers looking to compare

suppliers, analyse portfolio risks or prioritise audit programmes, etc.


4. Deliver Assurance

SMART supports assurance through stages 1-3, simply by helping assets and business

partners to understand and self-assess against expectations and by providing access to

guidance on how to comply and improve performance. However, SMART goes one step

further by providing mechanisms for directly supporting corporate assurance.

Self-assessments and improvement plans can be shared with corporate

managers, auditors and others to demonstrate transparency and enabling

corporate monitoring.

Corporate managers can analyse asset portfolios to assess levels of

compliance and determine priorities for audits and targeted on-site training.

Auditors can use self-assessments and improvement plans as the basis of site visits, to

verify compliance ratings and to work with assets and business partners on agreed

improvement plans.

Corporate control panels can be tailored to meet specific requirements of managers, for

example in procurement, fund management, customer account management or

corporate compliance.

smart overview_esg risk

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