What was the challenge?
Old Mutual Group Plc is a FTSE 100 listed savings, protection and investment group based in London and operating in 34 countries.
In May 2007, they launched a group-wide fi nance programme, ‘Finance 2010,’ in response to their rapid growth and the increasing demands of external reporting.
One of the principal goals of the programme is the Financial Control Initiative (FCI). The aim of FCI is to enable better fi nancial information management and ensure against fi nancial reporting errors, thereby mitigating regulatory compliance risks. To achieve this, the Group needed to implement highly secure, risk-focused systems and processes.
The framework for the FCI consists of an ongoing cycle of assessing the risks inherent in fi nancial reporting, gathering evidence that appropriate controls are in place, confirming that they work and demonstrating that any breakdowns in controls are being addressed. Management needed access to real, reliable fi nancial detail and wanted the tools to help them do this.
Following recommendations from Deloitte and Touche, Old Mutual entrusted Content and Code to join forces and help deliver the right risk management solution together.
What was our solution?
Content and Code custom-built a web-based Financial Control Tool (FCT) for OMG that featured:
- Dashboards to enable any individual in the organisation to access information pertinent to their role
- Group-wide risk calculating to assess the risk for any part of the group at any time
- Integration with Qlikview to facilitate more sophisticated reporting
- Self-generated task lists for individual employees to ensure better management and control of tasks
- Multiple security levels to provide maximum security of information and data while restricting users to a role-dependent subsets of information
- Connectible web parts to allow for filtering of information
What were the results?
Previously, information was distributed across multiple locations in multiple formats. Now it is centrally located in SharePoint, allowing users at any level of the organisation to easily access and report on data that is applicable to their role.
Not only does the solution allow staff to manage controls that they are responsible for, it also enables them to view the overall status of any process they are involved in, including all other team members’ individual tasks.
In addition, processes are now automated and consistent across the group. Employees save a lot of time, and the potential of financial reporting inaccuracies is greatly reduced. By improving consistency and efficiency of financial reporting, our solution allows OMG to be more productive as an organisation.
Finally, the Tool furnishes OMG with a comprehensive audit trail with all actions documented in the system and transparency for management and the FSA.