When I heard first of Covid-19 somewhere in December, I thought it is just in China and how does it impact globally so much. My first realization to real threat of virus came in February, when I read a tweet in  which said forget of economy think of virus, then I went through research including that of  world economic forum report “This is impact of corona-virus on business” stating about economy and fight against virus. Thereafter  I went back to board and drew to myself what now companies have to look is both health as well as wealth of themselves and all it stakeholders. Also I realized how my work as risk professional is becoming all the more important now. Following were 3 key aspect of crisis which I noticed.

• Human health and life are in question and we need to immediately respond to build Succession plan, have flexible and easily available backup for talent without incurring additional cost. It is important to ensure business and staff, build alternative strategy and decision-making flexibility. Need was realized for Immediately building authorization hierarchy as well. It was here I understood yet another need and use of Delegation of authority. In fact, for first time I advised and gave lot of emphasis on Insurance. Also, at personal level I realized health is my and our responsibility and not of healthcare professional who can only make an attempt to treat.
• Enterprise risk management as Individual silo risk was considered by many organizations, however there was no effective ERM approach, if all risk occur in parallel. The individual siloed risk would fail to address demand, supply, people, liquidity, Technology and all risk together at same time.Thus ERM program need to be revisited  to understand in essence Power of aggregation and need to respond to this at faster, flexible and agile way. Also, I appreciated need to take and fix demand side first and rest all will be taken care of. To fix demand side there was need to integrate what exist, need to focus on value of product and service and bring alternate usage of it. For example, Hotel supplying isolation bed, Passenger airline being turned to cargo airline. Fashion being addressed to meet comfort aspect and protective dresses and design.
• Importance of Industry and rising path to Industry 4.0. This world is of knowledge, connectivity and It need not be physical but indeed virtual one

Then I grasped how this all can all be done. Answer was by redefining to new normal program of Internal financial controls.

Look back and redo scoping to identify new business, new geography, new product, new skill and people model, work model and new risk, revisit risk assessment, revisit materiality, revisit quantitative and qualitative factor crucial for scoping of account balance. Once this is done next step is to map them to sub processes and processes.

Where process is not present define and implement it. Where it is present revisit it to adjust to new normal. For example, in case mode of delivery and sale become virtual and online, we need to look when does risk and reward get transferred, how delivery is recorded, document which are exchanged to complete the transaction including people, what are mode, form and format. All this need to be revisited and adopted for change.

Next step is to define control to address risk of error and fraud including those to address assertion of accuracy, completeness, recording, validity, valuation, cut off and presentation. Few may need to be revisited and readjusted. We may have to revisit frequency of control, control owner as it could go for change. Further few controls defined in ERP may have to be looked again as they need to be tweaked and changed to allow process change. May be some new automated against manual control need to be defined.

Testing and audit approach also need to be revisited and be more online and partially offline, with visit of auditors for understanding, performing walk-through, discussion of finding and closure.

In effect all this on a long run bring road map to online continuous virtual connect and testing solution. It lays path to online Reporting and filing with regular Realtime dashboard available to stakeholders.

Thus, new normal if adopted may bring efficiency, effectiveness and sustainable solution. Companies to adapt may need to build and bring some controls rationalizations, and a way of monitoring them on an ongoing basis. The ultimate solution to same is taking leap toward being more smart, agile, technology driven and at same time sticking to basic and fundamentals.