LOLC honoured at GRC Achievement awards

LOLC Group’s Enterprise Risk Management operations brought home a prestigious, global accolade, when they won an Achievement Award for Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC) for 2012. This award was presented by the Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG) at the 7th Annual Compliance Week Conference for Corporate, Financial, Legal, Risk, Audit and Compliance Officers, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC U.S.A. Brian Barnier, the Chairman of the Judging panel, an OCEG Fellow and Principal Analyst of ValueBridge Advisors presented the award to the LOLC Group.

From left . Bruce Carpenter, Senior Director, Internal Audit, Sybase; Sharmini Wickremasekera, Chief Risk Officer of the LOLC Group; Brian Barnier, OCEG Fellow, OCEG; Tom Harper, Executive Vice President/General Auditor, Internal Audit Department, Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago; Christina, US Department of Treasury; Howard Osborne, Director, DC Financing Operations, U.S. Department of the Treasury.

LOLC was adjudged a winner along with three other top US companies and government agencies, namely; The Bureau of Public Debt-Office of Financing of the U.S. Department of Treasury; The Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago; and Sybase, an SAP Company.

The specialty of this award is that LOLC was the only Asian company who bagged the achievement award. At the ceremony, LOLC Group’s Enterprise Risk Management system was acclaimed by the judging panel, with notable praise bestowed on the Group’s centralized Integrated Risk Management Structure.

In her congratulatory note to LOLC, Carole Switzer, President of the OCEG said, “I am writing to extend my personal congratulations to LOLC, as a recipient of 2012 GRC Achievement Award from OCEG. The awards recognize the great strides that companies, government agencies and other organizations have made in improving and integrating their approaches to governance, risk management and compliance, to achieve principled performance.”

LOLC was praised for managing the complexity in regulatory and risk issues in their risk profiles, whilst facing a range of corporate cultures throughout its multitude of subsidiaries, and the challenge of governing a growing conglomerate.

The task of ensuring that LOLC’s risk management processes are effective and robust falls under the purview of the Group’s Enterprise Risk Management Division. LOLC’s recognition at the OCEG Awards is attributed to the Group’s success in establishing and implementing an organizational structure and framework for risk management drawing on the synergies of Internal Audit, Risk Management, Information Systems Audit and Compliance.

LOLC, in a media statement said that receiving the GRC Achievement Award, in recognition of its efforts on a global platform, is a tremendous achievement for the entire LOLC Group of Companies and for the country. LOLC praised the efforts taken by organizations such as the OCEG, to establish a more ethical and accountable GRC framework whilst helping organizations achieve their objectives, as both welcoming and praiseworthy, especially during a time when global economies are recovering from the adverse effects of lack of compliance and risk management.