On January 28, 1986, just 73 seconds into its flight, the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 46,000 feet (14 km) above the Atlantic Ocean. It killed all seven crew members and marked the first fatal accident involving an American spacecraft in flight.
On the 7th of October 2021, NatWest Bank pleaded guilty to criminal charges brought by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority under the Money Laundering Regulations 2007. It marked the first criminal prosecution brought under this regulation and the bank was subsequently fined over £264m.
At first sight, there may be little to link these two events.
In the case of Challenger, the cause of the disaster was the failure of the two redundant O-ring seals in a joint in the shuttle’s right solid rocket booster (SRB), combined with unanticipated record-low temperatures that stiffened the rubber O-rings, reducing their ability to seal the joints.
With NatWest, the cause was a failure to conduct ongoing monitoring of a business relationship and an erroneous risk rating, combined with weaknesses in the bank’s automatic transaction monitoring system and ultimately failures to respond to alerts and reports.
But on closer examination, the two are inextricably linked by the same causal factor – a catastrophic failure in risk management.
Webinar: The causal factors that lead to catastrophic risk management failures
In order to see how organisations can learn from these seismic events and avoid the risk management failures that can lead to disaster, Stephen Platt, co-founder of the International Compliance Association, presented an unmissable webinar.
Drawing on his 30-year experience conducting investigations into compliance failure, he took a deep dive into the subject and revealed the most common factors that have led to, and continue to result in, catastrophic risk management failures such as these.
In the webinar the following topics are covered in detail:
- The nature of fallibility
- The common weaknesses posed by people, processes, and technology
- The criticality of implementing effective onboarding, screening, and lifecycle risk management
- The dangers of failing to adopt a risk-based approach when onboarding and screening customers, suppliers, and counterparties
- The lessons learned from catastrophic failures in financial services, the industrial sector, aviation, and space exploration
You can watch a replay of this insightful and highly informative webinar for yourself and help your organisation to avoid a catastrophic risk management failure in the future.
For more information on how to manage potential risk, request a discovery call today.
