In a Ground Breakers interview featured here, RBC Chief Audit Executive William Onuwa and Senior Director of Behavioural Science Rimma Teper share how they have sought to bring new practices to the firm’s third-line function. [See the Ground Breakers Article An Interview with William Onuwa and Rimma Teper] “Now, more than ever, we understand that organizations can fail if there isn’t operational and business resilience,” Onuwa says, noting a post-pandemic shift in priorities that emphasizes a focus on non-financial risks. “I believe that the expectations have changed in terms of understanding not only which controls fail, but the reasons why controls fail,” he adds. Though audit executives have always been concerned for the root cause of risk management failures, past efforts to determine this have neglected “a big part of the picture, which in my view is behavioural and cultural.”
“Culture and conduct are central to and underly all risk matters,” Onuwa continues. After seeing peers at NatWest apply behavioral science to the audit function, Onuwa was intrigued to explore a similar approach. [See also the 2022 Ground Breakers Article The Value of Outsiders, Inside] “New capabilities such as behavioural science and data analytics have helped us dig deeper,” Onuwa says, while helping RBC to stay abreast of evolving regulatory expectations. In the current climate, he emphasizes, “culture is going to be a key focus for all financial institutions.”
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