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Anti-bribery and corruption risk assessments
An anti- bribery and corruption risk assessment is one of the principle steps that a company must take in order to accurately identify and prioritise the corruption risks it faces.
With regulatory and investigative authorities regarding ABC risk assessments as critical to the development of adequate procedures to prevent bribery, it is vital to get this important step right. Any company that fails to conduct a robust and specific bribery risk assessment cannot be confident that its anti-corruption programme addresses its corruption risks sufficiently.
What do we do?
GoodCorporation facilitates rigorous and thorough anti-bribery risk assessments, helping companies to focus on the granular details of the corruption risks specific to the nature and location of their business. This enables companies to develop adequate controls to prevent corruption that are proportionate to the nature and scale of the bribery risks it takes.
How GoodCorporation’s ABC risk assessments can protect your business
Effective risk assessments help organisations to identify possible exposure, design effective mitigation measures and ensure that their anti-corruption procedures are relevant and proportionate.
Our anti-corruption risk assessments are tailored to the needs of an organisation and can be conducted at group or local level, as appropriate.
Companies that use our ABC risk assessments are able to:
- Understand their specific corruption risks
- Classify risks into four categories: low, medium, high and extreme
- Evaluate risks according to defined impact and likelihood
- Identify appropriate and proportionate risk mitigation actions
- Produce a clear picture of ABC risks to the company
- Help mitigate the likelihood of prosecution by ensuring that the company can demonstrate it has adequate procedures in place to address the bribery and corruption risks faced
Anti-bribery risk assessments should be carried out periodically, but especially in response to any significant changes to the nature or scope of the organisation. However, according to our most recent study, this is an area that businesses struggle to do well. Forty percent of the ABC risk assessment procedures we have evaluated were found to be inadequate.
Anti-bribery risk assessment podcast
In our anti-bribery risk assessment podcast, Michael Pollitt explores the key barriers to implementing effective anti-corruption risk assessments and how these can be overcome.
Why anti-bribery risk assessments are one of the hardest anti-corruption controls to get right
The GoodCorporation paper Combating Corruption: are businesses still at risk? revealed that 40% of the risk assessment procedures evaluated by GoodCorporation were inadequate. The purpose of conducting a risk assessment is to systematically identify the risks to which a company may be exposed in relation to its activities; in this case the bribery and or corruption risks the business may face. Any organisation that fails to conduct a robust and specific bribery risk assessment cannot be confident its anti-bribery and corruption (ABC) programmes are addressing its risks sufficiently.
Consequently, companies that have not properly assessed the full extent of any corruption risks remain vulnerable to corruption within their organisation. Not only that, they are also limited in their ability to demonstrate an adequate procedures or effective compliance defence.
Our paper also showed a significant gap emerging between the top and bottom companies. In the bottom quartile 81% of the risk assessment controls assessed were deemed inadequate. This compares to only 8% inadequacy on the top performing organisations.
An assessment of external bribery risks is intended to help decide how those risks can be mitigated by procedures governing the relevant operations or business relationships; but a bribery risk assessment should also examine the extent to which internal structures or procedures may themselves add to the level of risk.
Ministry of Justice
Bribery Act Guidance
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