Operational Risk in Mergers & Acquisitions

Handbook - November 2021

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are infrequent, time-consuming, and significant change events.

There is little clarity around the contribution of operational risk to mergers and acquisitions activity. As a result, ORX facilitated three member-led discussions to better understand the role of operational risk and identify key priorities to develop active risk management practice during mergers and acquisitions.

The biggest shared learning from these conversations is that a well-maintained playbook has three main benefits:

1. Helping operational risk to keep pace with the intensity of the M&A process
2. Driving effective planning of suitable resourcing and consultant support
3. Providing comfort and visibility to the regulator.

From these sessions, we collated our findings into a short guide and developed a checklist which is available for all members to use as a tool to assess how prepared they are for mergers and acquisitions.