Risk management
We manage potential risks and uncertainties that could have a material effect on the Group’s long-term performance and could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results through our risk management processes.We undertake various activities within a risk management framework to ensure that risk and uncertainty are properly managed and that appropriate internal controls are in place:
- The directors have overall responsibility for establishing and maintaining the systems of internal control and risk management, and for reviewing their effectiveness. These systems are designed to manage, rather than eliminate, the risk of failure to achieve business objectives, and to provide reasonable, but not absolute, assurance against material mis-statement or loss
- We carry out an annual detailed risk assessment to identify the nature and extent of operational and financial risks facing the Group and consider the likelihood of these risks materialising. We implement mitigation plans where we believe they are appropriate. This ongoing process has been in place for the reporting period and up to the date of approval of this annual report
- We have developed a risk-based internal audit plan to evaluate the overall provision of assurance provided by the processes managing each key risk
- The Audit Committee and senior management regularly review the risk assessment and internal audit plan
- We have voluntarily designed and implemented financial reporting controls to meet the standards required of a UK listed company complying with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We have fully documented the systems, processes and key controls that produce financial reporting. We update our documentation and test the identified key controls annually. This testing is in addition to, and runs parallel with, the internal audit plan and risk assessment programme
- The Board, with advice from the Audit Committee, has completed its annual review of the effectiveness of the system of internal controls in accordance with the guidance of the Turnbull Report (updated October 2005), and is satisfied that it complies with that guidance
More information on our risk management processes can be found in our 2008 Annual and Corporate Responsibility Reports. Go to the Annual & Interim reports page or go to the CR Reports & presentations page.
