The Management of Operational Risk Through Appropriate Insurance Schemes

Retail Electronic Banking As with a bank's commercial customer base, electronic banking is also penetrating the retail market. Services such as telephone bill payments, PC based home banking, and the use of "smart" telephones combining the features of both a conventional telephone and a microcomputers present significant opportunities for enhancing both the level of customer service and revenue in the highly competitive retail sector. However, at the same time, these new electronic products open new avenues of exposure to both third party and employee fraud as well as potential areas of professional liability exposure. In future this will become an increasingly important risk exposure area for the banks. The increased use of telephone services that permit computer access to banks' systems also provide an increasing opportunity to "hackers” and other criminals. These require improvements in security measures and additional risk management techniques to minimize losses. 2.2. Professional Risk Exposures directly related to the provision of financial products and services currently constitute both the single largest and most rapidly growing form of operational risk globally within the financial industry. 2.2.1 Professional Errors and Ommissions All banks are subject to operational losses associated with professional errors and omission by employees. These include losses through errors committed by staff such as unauthorized trading, erroneous transfer of funds to wrong accounts. errors in booking or recording securities transaction, etc. In the event where such losses are for the account of the bank itself i.e. for trades on the bank's own account, these type of losses are completely uninsurable and must be controlled by means of traditional methods such as strong internal controls, quality assurance programs, rigorous staff training programs and strong and active management