Operational risks in fund accounting

Over the past years, the landscape of the investment fund industry has been reshaping itself, adapting to the evolving financial markets. Along with this shift, changes have occured in the way the fund accountants operate, organise, manage risk, implement regulations and interact with other stakeholders of the investment fund value chain.

Our training aims at helping participants understand and monitor the different risks inherent to the FA operations and processes.

• By the end of this session, participants will have a good understanding of operational risk linked to fund accounting activities and of its causes (people, processes, systems and external events).

• Risk management and the different types of risks (market, credit, liquidity, operational and others)
• Definition of operational risk
• Operational risk (processes, people, systems, external events)
• ORM (identify, assess, optimise, monitor, report) and the 3 lines of defence model

This training will be coordinated by Anthony Bianco, Partner, and Laura Geisen, Director at PwC Luxembourg.

Anthony is part of the Internal Audit and Regulatory Advisory teams at PwC Luxembourg and is primarily responsible for financial sectors clients (asset management and banks).

He has more than 15 years of experience in the audit (internal and external) and regulatory practices. Qualified as Certified Internal Auditor (CIA), he started his career in the external audit department of PwC Luxembourg in 2007 specialising in the external audit of investment funds (mutual funds, hedge funds and private equity funds). Additionally, he gained international experience at the PwC New York office from 2010 to 2012 where he was in charge of large alternative investment funds with various strategies and structures.

Laura is part of the internal audit team within the risk assurance department, benefiting from 12 years of experience in the audit practice.

She carries out several internal audit reviews for clients within the financial sector that outsourced or co-sourced their internal audit function to PwC. Her experience includes internal audit reviews, business controls testing, walkthroughs, process reviews, through which she has developed her knowledge and skills over governance, compliance, risk and internal control.

Laura has developed an expertise in regulations applicable to banks. She is also exposed to advisory projects, such as set-up of policies and procedures, internal control reviews and implementation of AML/CTF risk appetite and risk assessment.