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32 www.canadianlawyermag.com/inhouse FOR AN ORGANIZATION devoted to ensuring The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto has the funding necessary to conduct medical research and save young lives, the most common question asked at its compliance meetings is about the health of the management team. "What keeps you up at night?" That's the way Mark Goldbloom, general counsel and chief risk officer at The Hospital for Sleeping easier through enterprise risk management Program addresses future uncertainties that could endanger SickKids Foundation's business and strategic objectives the Toronto area to provide coaching for front-line workers and voice of the customer representa- tives on how to respond in situations where they suspected customers were at risk. Raphaël says that navigating financial fraud situations is tricky because customers can react in a variety of ways. Some don't believe they are being scammed. Some get angry with the bank, thinking it is trying to interfere in personal finan- cial matters. Despite those kinds of reactions, however, it is important for the bankers to keep the lines of communication open with the cus- tomers, even if that means bringing in investiga- tors, senior branch personnel or executives to speak with the customers. "The goal being that in the future, we would not have to be part of every conversation. And they would only reach out to us when there was a legal issue or something they really felt the need to dis- cuss with us," explains Raphaël. The training, which was planned for six months, stretched into eight or nine months, in part to ensure people were comfortable dealing with financial fraud situations when they arose but also to allow the litigation department to gath- er data on how well the pilot was working and how happy front-line employees were with the training and support they received. In February the project was rolled out across the country, and Raphaël says the results have been more than positive. Looking purely at the numbers, there has been a reduction of workload for the litigation department. "When we started, everything came to us — every situation of vulnerable customer abuse was escalated to us. Now, I would say that there is a decrease of approximately 35 to 40 per cent. So, the [customer service] groups can handle a lot more without coming to us. And I'm confident that in the next months, they will feel even more con- fident," she says, adding that it is also becoming more common for front-line bankers to just seek out the litigation department for reassurance that they are on the right track, rather than handing the whole situation over to the department. Beyond making the litigation department more efficient, however, Raphaël says the pro- gram has done a good job in preventing fraud against the bank's customers, stopping ongoing fraud at earlier stages, and educating customers about scams. CATEGORY: Risk management COMPANY: SickKids Foundation Raphaël is quick to point out that while the bank put a lot of time and effort into creating this program and training its staff to deal with vulnera- ble customers, there are outside factors that con- tributed to the success of the program. "When we started thinking about this project, we were in a very difficult position, because when we realise someone was the victim of financial abuse, we could not report this to the police. It was a privacy breach. It was difficult. Even reaching out to a family member was difficult. Now, there have been amendments to the law and we have this option if we want to engage a family member or a partner," she says. It also helped that this was a passion project. "Everyone who was involved in this proj- ect are very busy people. They all have, as we say, their day jobs, and no one is looking for work. But I remember when we had our first kickoff meet- ing, I knew this would be a success story, because it didn't take any convincing. Everyone knew that this was the right thing to do." Sick Children Foundation (which operates as SickKids Foundation), starts every risk and compliance meeting. He wants to know what concerns senior management has about issues or potential problems that could put the foundation at risk. "It's amazing how with that one sen- tence, people will be able to say, 'Oh, this is what I'm worried about.' And you know, I always think we can address those risks and everyone will sleep easier. To me, that's the ultimate goal: to manage that risk." In order to help the foundation manage risks and to better encourage the growth of the risk management culture within the organization, Goldbloom, a colleague who is no longer with the organization, and a cross-department team de- veloped and implemented an enterprise risk management program at the behest of the chief Mark Goldbloom, general counsel and chief risk officer INNOVATIO