A sample listing of issues that typically plague the bank might include:

1. Long cycle time from “agreeing the deal” to approval, and from approval to disbursement.
   
   
2. Documentation…unwieldy, not customer  friendly, too long and complicated. Tracking is inaccurate, there is an  inability to ‘mine’ legal data and a long retrieval time when documents are needed for review or return to the customer.
   
   
3. Risk Data: incomplete, lodged in various different systems that do not talk to each other, not reconciled with Finance.
   
4. Front line / Relationship Manager time: 70% spent on internal administration and paperwork, only 30% spent on customer focused revenue generating activities. Can this be improved or even reversed?
   
   
5. A silo mentality both within the Risk Organization and in terms of other parts of the bank (Operations, Relationship Managers, Finance).  A lack of cross functional communication.
   
   
6. Senior Executive time within the Risk organization: not enough “think time”, too caught up in day to day management and non critical administrative minutiae. No time for the “big picture” which should be the primary focus of the CRO, the CEO and their respective top teams.
   
   
7. Lack of appropriate delegation of authority and empowerment  within the Risk organization and partner business units. Everything therefore flows to the top.
   
   
8. Approval / sanctioning process. Too many signatures, protracted, does not meet customer expectations or the expectations and needs of the front line deal generators.
   
   
9. Risk reporting: 90% of time spent on production, 9% on analysis and 1% on resultant corrective action. How to streamline production, ensure 100 % accurate and reconciled data to enable 90% of the time to be spent on analysis and action, rather than production?
   
   
10. Strengthening the linkage between Risk Strategy , Risk Plan, Risk Appetite and day to day reality of the Risk process.
    
11. How to keep the Board adequately and accurately informed without overwhelming the organization with the production of data that never really gets looked at or acted upon.
    
    
12. How to create a genuine partnership between the Front Line and the Risk Group, whilst maintaining the integrity and independence of both?