In an ever-changing financial landscape, banks are confronted with increasingly intricate risks that demand strong and ethical governance, proactive risk management, effective internal controls, and value adding, reliable and effective internal audit. The call for the internal audit function to step up and implement a robust and agile approach becomes paramount.

Target insights from this session: the significant and evolving role of internal audit in the face of mounting complexities within the banking industry and what else must internal auditors do to remain relevant and elevate the impact and value provided to key stakeholders in this dynamic environment.

Recognized as the Philippine’s central monetary authority, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is mandated to promote an economic environment conducive to a balanced and sustainable growth.

In this Session, various expectations based on the latest BSP regulatory issuances and key focus and priorities affecting the banking industry shall be highlighted. Also, insights on how internal auditors can effectively fulfill the duties expected by the regulators like BSP to promote sound and safe banking and financial stability in the country will be tackled.

Financial crimes such as money laundering, terrorist financing, proliferation financing, corruption, and frauds pose significant threats to the stability and integrity of both local and global financial system. In this session, the crucial need to strengthen the 3rd line function in order to combat effectively the key financial crime threats facing the banks will be highlighted.

Target insights from this session: (a) what are the weaknesses exploited by these lawless elements, (b) how IA can take active part in the strengthening and proactive monitoring of operational areas that are susceptible to financial crimes, timely detection, and swift response to these incidents, and (c) how IA can further provide more value and help enhance and elevate the bank’s ability to safeguard its own interests, its customers, and the banking ecosystem.

In today’s rapidly evolving economic, regulatory, and financial landscape coupled with an era of technological advancement, disruptive business model, and innovations, the banking industry is driven to be ahead in its risk-sensing capabilities. As such, banks rely on effective governance and risk management, a robust internal control and, efficient processes to safeguard and protect the business and interests of its customers. And internal audit play a crucial role in ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency in the bank’s operations. With the right technology and optimizing its use, internal auditors can elevate their overall contribution to the bank’s successes.

Let us gain insights from this Session on what and how the emerging tools can help harness capabilities in detection and protection from fraud, financial crimes, and cybersecurity risks and enhance sustainability reporting, automated controls testing, and continuous monitoring.

*Topic & Synopsis are subject to change

Sustainable Finance is becoming increasingly important given the high clients’ demand for green and sustainable labeled products. In recent years, there has been a growing trend towards a standardized sustainable finance reporting framework that aims to provide a consistent, transparent, and comparable set of metrics for banks to report on their sustainability performance and risks. This information is used by investors, clients, and other stakeholders to evaluate an organization’s sustainability performance and to make informed decisions. Inaccurate and unreliable reporting can have significant risks (for example, legal risk, reputational risk, including greenwashing risk, etc.) for the reporting bank.

This session will highlight the key risks, challenges, and areas to watch from the third-line perspective.

Insider Threat is the risk to organizations from employees, former employees, contractors, or trusted third parties with knowledge about the organization or access to computer systems. The threat includes fraud, theft of confidential information, or sabotage. This could be either intentional or accidental.

This session will cover an approach for auditing the insider threat capabilities and some leading practices that may be applied.

Early this year, the US banking sector was reported to be in “crisis”, with three (3) banks collapsing one after the other since March, leading to raised concerns about the integrity and transparency of financial institutions. Another bank, considered to be of significant global impact, was reportedly undergoing a crisis. These selected banking crisis scenarios had reportedly some ripple effects regionally and offshore.

In this session, insights on the lessons learned from the collapse and/or subsequent rescue of these banks, as drawn from publicly available sources, will be discussed. The Key Audit Focus areas that can be inferred will be highlighted, with a high-level revisit of audit focus areas and audit strategy. The discussion will also reiterate the auditor's independence in assessing the primary role of bank management and the board in the governance, risk management, internal control and regulatory compliance processes of the bank, especially as regards higher-risk issues cited in audit examinations. This high-level discussion is aimed at instilling a mental discipline, which would ensure that a bank's '3rd Line of Defense" , i.e., the internal audit function, would remain relevant and true to its mission in a bank.