Risk Managers Association of Nigeria has urged banks to increase investment in risk assessment technology in order to mitigate the increased risks that come with digitization in the banking sector.
The President of RIMAN, Mr. Magnus Nnoka, said this at the 20th annual international conference of the association, where stakeholders gathered to deliberate on risk management in a digital era.
Nnoka said, “The rise in digital assets and channels consequently lead to emerging and evolving risk types, therefore, we are seeing increasing digitization of risk.
“Even as organizations seek increasing digitization, we can readily identify a few of the drawbacks on this journey; these include legacy information asset, organizational culture, data quality, dearth of requisite talent and complexity of organizational structure.”
He added that in the digital era, risk management professionals would be required to review and reshape their mandate and roles, develop the digitally-driven mindset and capacity to provide faster, more forward-looking, and deeper insights in driving the new working environment.
Nnoka said, “Furthermore, concerns have been raised, not by a few, that technological innovation or digitalization specifically in the banking sector appears to be concentrated mostly on customer-facing journeys such as online banking and marketing and the activities that support these journeys such as customer onboarding, customer servicing and resolution of complaints.
“It is my submission that managing risk in a digital era should be supported by adequate and appropriate investment in digitalization of risk management. Digital risk transformations should be pursued intentionally by organizations. It will be increasingly challenging for risk management approach to stay analog
while customer-facing activities and operations race ahead into digital.”