This section contains frequently asked questions on the Aptius Enterprise Risk Framework and the Aptius Express high level operational risk diagnostic service.
Aptius
What is Aptius?
Aptius is a scalable framework for the complete identification, measurement and management of enterprise risk. It allows an organisation to model its business in terms of the risk drivers, factors, indicators and controls that are in place to manage that risk. The framework can link to multiple disparate data sources including databases, Excel spreadsheets, Word documents and external mathematical libraries. It is then possible to apply flexible, user-defined business logic to obtain estimates for risk and capital and to visualise the impact of individual inputs with advanced tools. Aptius also contains a complete set of tools for the management of operational risk including a loss event database and web-based scorecards that are compliant with AS/NZS 4360:2004.
Who should use Aptius?
Aptius is designed to be used by any firm that has requirements to measure and manage its risks on a business-wide basis. It is fully compliant with the Basel III, the Capital Requirements Directive, Solvency 2 and Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and is fully scalable across multiple business lines.
Why develop Aptius?
Symb recognised that the problem of measuring and managing risk across an organisation is made difficult by a number of key factors. These include the reliance on data from multiple systems and in multiple different formats, the need to be able to flexibly model risk using different methodologies, the ability to estimate both risk and regulatory capital charges and the ability to demonstrate compliane with the regulatory framework. Aptius was developed to meet the above needs in a timely and cost effective manner.
What are its key components?
Aptius has five key components:
- Web based services for the input and analysis of enterprise risk data providing full top-down and bottom-up capabilities (including a risk register, web-based reporting, event and scorecard data for operational risk).
- Design tools for the modelling a business in terms of its risks and business logic for estimating its risk and capital.
- Advanced visualisation, simulation and reporting tools to allow in-depth analysis of the factors that contribute to risk.
- Full requirements management and risk programme implementation functionality that provides an organisation the ability to both manage its risk programme and ensure that senior management are able to meet their obligations to the regulators under the Basel III Accord, Capital Requirements Directive, Solvency 2 and MiFID.
- A framework to measure and manage enterprise risk within the organisation over time.
Are there pre-defined methodologies within the framework?
Although one of the key capabilities of Aptius is its flexibility, the framework ships with a number of pre-defined models for both the risk model and calculation methods for estimating risk.
Does the framework come with any key risk indicator based scorecards?
As well as in-built tools for the design and deployment of scorecards, Aptius comes with a generic scorecard of around 80 questions designed to provide a solid basis for most organisations.
What is Aptius Express?
Aptius Express is a service to provide high level operational risk diagnostic and health-check to organisations. It is designed to perform a high level analysis within a business in order to identify operational risk hot-spots and areas of potential concern for the future. The results of the analysis can then be reported to decision makers using the powerful and flexible tools that are a key part of the Aptius framework.
Who should use Aptius Express?
Aptius Express should be used by any organisation that will benefit from a review of its operational risk framework, either to enable it to identify areas of weakness or seek to develop their operational risk management capability with the most efficient use of resources.
Why develop Aptius Express?
After discussion with a number of industry practitioners, it was suggested that a high-level operational risk diagnostic service that could be deployed within a business in a timely and cost effective manner would provide organisations with a valuable tool in the management of operational risk.
What are the key components of Aptius Express?
Aptius Express consists of a number of web based components to measure operational risk in a number of dimensions along with structured interviews with key personnel. This information is then processed using the Aptius framework to provide an analysis of the operational risk hot-spots and areas of potential weakness within an organisation.
