Operational Risk Management for Compliance Officers Training Course

Course overview

Compliance officers are expected to identify control failures before they become regulatory breaches, customer harm, financial loss, or audit findings. Yet many compliance teams inherit risk registers that mix obligations, incidents, controls, and vague concerns without clear ownership or evidence of effectiveness. This course equips participants to turn regulatory requirements and compliance monitoring results into a disciplined operational risk process that supports defensible decisions, timely escalation, and practical remediation.

Participants learn how to define operational risk in a compliance context; distinguish inherent, residual, emerging, and conduct risks; and build a risk taxonomy aligned to business processes and regulatory obligations. They practise risk and control self-assessments (RCSAs), likelihood-and-impact scoring, key risk indicator (KRI) design, control testing, issue management, and risk reporting. The programme also covers risk appetite statements, loss-event analysis, scenario analysis, third-party compliance risk, and the use of heat maps and dashboards without overstating their precision.

Instruction combines facilitated teaching with realistic case material from regulated organisations, including a sanctions-screening failure, unsuitable customer outcomes, and a third-party due-diligence breakdown. Participants work in teams to develop an operational risk register, RCSA worksheet, KRI set, control-testing plan, and management risk report. Each participant leaves with a completed compliance operational risk pack and a 90-day implementation plan tailored to their own function.

The course is designed for compliance professionals who need stronger operational risk methods, whether they are establishing a compliance risk framework, improving monitoring and assurance work, or preparing to work more effectively with risk, internal audit, legal, and business-control teams.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a compliance-focused operational risk taxonomy linked to business processes, regulatory obligations, and control owners
• Facilitate a risk and control self-assessment using cause-event-impact analysis and documented control evidence
• Calculate and justify inherent and residual risk ratings using defined likelihood, impact, velocity, and control-effectiveness criteria
• Design key risk indicators with thresholds, data sources, escalation triggers, and accountable owners
• Test preventive and detective controls using walkthroughs, sample selection, evidence review, and exception recording
• Analyse compliance incidents and near misses through root-cause analysis, loss-event capture, and corrective-action tracking
• Produce a risk register and heat map that prioritise treatment actions, deadlines, and management decisions
• Prepare a concise operational risk report for senior management using risk appetite, KRI trends, and issue-status data

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Compliance Officers — who must identify, assess, monitor, and escalate regulatory and conduct risks
• Compliance Managers — who need consistent RCSA, control-testing, and reporting methods across their teams
• Financial Crime Compliance Analysts — who manage risks arising from AML, sanctions, fraud, and customer due diligence controls
• Regulatory Affairs Specialists — who translate new obligations into operational risk assessments and implementation actions
• Risk and Control Officers — who need to align first-line control activities with second-line compliance assurance
• Internal Audit Professionals — who assess the design and operating effectiveness of compliance risk management arrangements

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand the purpose of compliance controls and have some exposure to their organisation’s policies, regulatory obligations, monitoring activity, incidents, or audit findings. Familiarity with basic spreadsheet use, including sorting, filtering, and simple formulas in Microsoft Excel, is helpful because risk registers and KRIs are developed in workshop exercises. No prior qualification in enterprise risk management, statistics, internal audit, ISO 31000, COSO, or specialist GRC software is required. A complete beginner can attend, but should expect to work with practical risk terminology and structured case exercises from the first day.

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor-led modules to introduce each method, followed by guided application in a regulated-business case. Participants complete RCSA worksheets, score risks against a defined matrix, test control evidence, draft KRIs, and challenge one another’s risk ratings in facilitated calibration sessions. Small-group work mirrors conversations between compliance, operations, and risk teams. Daily case outputs build into a single operational risk pack, and the final session converts that pack into a practical 90-day application plan for the participant’s workplace.

Course outline

Day 1: Operational risk foundations for compliance

• Operational risk definitions in regulated business activities
• The three lines model and compliance accountability
• Risk taxonomy design for regulatory and conduct exposures
• Links between obligations, processes, risks, controls, and evidence
• Inherent risk, residual risk, and control effectiveness concepts
• Risk appetite, tolerance, and breach escalation
• Risk register structure and minimum data fields

Workshop: Participants map a selected compliance obligation to a business process and produce a first-draft risk-and-control inventory.

Day 2: Risk assessment and RCSA practice

• RCSA scope, participants, and workshop preparation
• Cause-event-impact analysis for operational risk scenarios
• Likelihood and impact scoring criteria
• Financial, regulatory, customer, and reputational impact measures
• Risk velocity and persistence in compliance assessments
• Control design versus operating effectiveness ratings
• Risk-rating calibration and challenge techniques

Workshop: Teams conduct an RCSA for a customer onboarding and sanctions-screening case and produce scored inherent and residual risk entries.

Day 3: Controls, monitoring, and key risk indicators

• Preventive, detective, and corrective compliance controls
• Control walkthroughs and evidence-based testing
• Sample selection and exception documentation
• Key risk indicator design principles
• KRI thresholds, triggers, and escalation protocols
• Leading and lagging indicators for compliance failures
• Monitoring plans and quality assurance schedules

Workshop: Participants design a control-testing plan and KRI dashboard specification for a due-diligence control environment.

Day 4: Incidents, third parties, and risk treatment

• Loss-event and near-miss capture methods
• Root-cause analysis using the five whys and fishbone diagram
• Issue classification, severity, and remediation tracking
• Third-party compliance risk assessment
• Scenario analysis for severe but plausible control failures
• Risk treatment options and risk acceptance criteria
• Action-plan ownership, due dates, and validation evidence

Workshop: Using a third-party bribery due-diligence failure case, participants complete a root-cause review and produce a prioritised remediation plan.

Day 5: Reporting, governance, and implementation

• Risk heat maps and their decision-making limitations
• Senior management risk reporting structure
• KRI trend analysis and threshold-breach narratives
• Risk committee packs and escalation records
• Alignment with ISO 31000 and COSO ERM principles
• Assurance mapping across compliance, risk, and internal audit
• Ninety-day operational risk implementation planning

Workshop: Participants present their completed compliance operational risk pack to a mock risk committee and finalise a 90-day implementation plan.

Tools & standards covered

ISO 31000:2018 Risk Management Guidelines, COSO Enterprise Risk Management Framework, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions