Peter Uzoho
Finance and audit experts have stressed the need for business organisations, especially those in the financial services sector, to continuously build good and sustainable corporate culture in their organisations for growth.
The experts spoke recently at the 50th Quarterly General Meeting of the Association of Chief Audit Executives of Banks in Nigeria (ACAEBIN) hosted by the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC)
Delivering his keynote speech at the event, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NMRC, Mr. Kehinde Ogundimu, said that the failure of many corporate giants like Enron and some of the liquidated local banks in Nigeria, had been attributed largely to poor corporate governance, driven by poor organizational culture.
Dwelling on the theme of the event, entitled, “The Role of Internal Audit in Building a Sustainable Organizational Culture”, Ogundimu
noted that building and sustaining a good corporate culture was critical to the stability and survival of institutions and the Nigerian financial system.
He said, “A distinguishing feature of leading organizations is their culture. Culture affects performance, employee engagement and the ability to create an innovative and positive work environment.
“Many Chief Executive Officers believe that improving culture would improve the value of their companies, because organizational culture impacts the appetite for change, innovation and risk awareness.”
Ogundimu stated that there was a strong relationship between organizational culture and corporate brand, adding that every organization, including financial institutions, values its brand and would go to every extent to protect it.
“The organizational culture must be right to sustain the reputation of the brand. Poor organizational culture heightens reputational risk exposure to the organization and must be carefully managed,” he said.
Highlighting the role of internal audit in building a sustainable organizational culture, Ogundimu said that, as an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity of the internal audit was designed to add value and improve an organization’s operations.
This, he explained, would be done by assisting in the establishment and sustenance of a good organizational culture through evaluating the design, implementation and effectiveness of the organization’s cultural/ethics-related policies, procedures, programmes and practices.
Other ways of achieving that, according to Ogundimu, were through being comfortable in their understanding of culture before starting to audit the indicators; include an element of culture into every risk-based audit using a testing program, survey or both.
He added that it involves ensuring bank-wide compliance with internal policies and procedures, relevant codes of corporate governance, other relevant laws, regulations and standards and recommendation of consequences for breaches, amongst others.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Chairman of ACAEBIN, Mr. Yinka Tiamiyu, underscored the importance of the theme of the meeting, stating that it encapsulated what the internal audit function does.
Such functions, according to him, included to what extent processes, procedure, actions and the tone at the top were in line with the values, ethics, risk appetite and policies of the organization.
Yinka noted that risk management, control and governance were key elements in building a sustainable organizational culture.
He said that as an advocacy group, the association was committed to collaborating with all relevant stakeholders in the banking industry in a bid to fashion out ways of improving collaboration, support and information sharing, especially in the fight against banking fraud.
