Leading fraud detection and prevention consultancy UKFraud (www.ukfraud.co.uk) has launched a new risk consultancy operation called Riskskill (www.riskskill.com). The new operation delivers ‘total risk’ assessments for major corporations. These are aimed at solving problems and engineering bespoke risk reduction solutions anywhere across the business including: organisational, management, financial control and IT.

The assessments analyse those areas where organisations could be at risk, including: fraud, cyber crime breaches, bad debts and other write-offs, along with compliance penalties and legal losses. Having identified specific areas of risk, Riskskill will draft detailed business process, measurement, HR and IT system change plans. The plans which are backed-up by comprehensive coaching, training and mentoring programmes aimed at engineering ground-up solutions throughout the client’s organisation and systems.

Assessments are based upon proven analysis techniques used by UKFraud in the fraud and business consultancy sectors. The new operation draws upon both UKFraud’s resources and a selection of experienced ‘best of breed’ risk consultants, each a specialist in their own field.

Bill Trueman, the CEO of UKFraud and of the new Riskskill operation, believes that the new consultancy offers a radical alternative to major corporations suffering loss across the enterprise. In his view, “If the shareholders of some companies knew of the risks that their organisations faced, there would be many more demands for greater accountability and calls for changes to board membership at AGMs. However, in many cases the risks and exposures are played down or even concealed. Sometimes they are simply attributed to economic and external factors, rather than addressed.

“Major corporations are somewhat slow at making major reactive changes. However, they are also slow at implementing longer-term strategies to address risk ‘gaps’. As a result, they can often be aware of risk and the related or potential losses, but cannot adapt fast enough to manage the change required professionally. Sometimes the risk hot-spots fall between organisational silos so that no one area of the business is responsible. In these cases, what is needed is a more radical approach. It may be that an IT related solution is required on the one hand, or simply a specific organisational change on the other. However, it frequently takes an experienced external viewpoint to spot, monitor, analyse and eliminate the risk fully.

“From our experience, most organisations are needlessly at risk across a range of areas and often the consequential losses could be a major threat to business performance. However, these risks can usually be identified quickly and effective plans drawn up. By utilising Riskskill, organisations can appreciate quickly the level of risk they are running and therein plan to reduce this rapidly.”