We all imagine that the big companies in the world have a power of decision and control over the global economic and monetary activity; that exceeds even that of the states and the multi-state organisms.
These companies can influence the decisions taken by the states and generate practically from one day to the next. Many other companies and organizations that depend in some way on these decisions face serious financial crises that suppose their fall. macro scale.
Decisions, right or wrong, sometimes lead to international crises like the one that stemmed from the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States. The springs of that crisis were experienced for years in Europe, especially in some countries such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain or Ireland, which are still recovering today.
Professionals trained in risk control
Faced with this situation of lack of control and uncertainty, companies have learned that errors are paid dearly and that, to avoid this, it is essential to go deeper into aspects such as treasury, finance and risk management.
The University of Alcalá, aware of the need for companies to have professionals trained in these areas, has launched a deep program, a master finance, complete and specific financial engineering, which develops the main IT tools to obtain control of the financial aspects of the company, such as R and Excel Financial. This master in quantitative finance is specially developed for those people who want to direct their career towards the treasury and the risks. A master in online finance of this type, one of the most complete and unique in this field in Spain, is also a great job opportunity, because many multinationals are demanding profiles of this caliber, very well paid.
This master’s degree is open to students who are passionate about the economy and want to deepen their knowledge of financial risks. However, the main objective of these studies is to offer a better job expectation, since students acquire skills and abilities that will enable them to perform tasks in the business world with a global perspective of the financial system and capital markets.
How to control risk management in a company?
The risks are inherent to the activity of any company. All business organizations incur risks when making investments, giving credit to clients, performing day-to-day operational tasks, designing new products, launching advertising campaigns …. The sources of the risks are very numerous, so that an inadequate administration can lead to fatal consequences for the company.
This requires the inclusion of risk management models in which a sufficient culture and structure is put in place to evaluate, control, communicate and analyze these risks. It is important, to control this whole issue, to promote in the organization behaviors such as integrity, transparency, honesty and good work. The first step has to be that of empowering those attributes in the organization, and later it is when we have to talk about creating policies and processes that have to be met and that aim to identify, measure, control and monitor those risks, whether internal or external.
What are the main risks that companies face?
All companies, to a greater or lesser extent, are exposed to some type of financial risk, hence the need to have professionals who master this matter. These risks are summarized in: operational, liquidity, credit or market.
Operational risk is the one that is linked to the business’s own activity, and includes aspects as different from each other as those relating to personnel, the risk of fraud, the management of inventories and a long criteria.
Liquidity risks are understood as referring to the assets and liabilities of the company: not being able to dispose of assets, liabilities can not be paid on their due date, the price to pay them is not adequate and all these linked issues.
Credit risks are those associated with the possibility of defaults over time and this implies a decrease in the cash flow, generating extra expenses for the recovery processes and other similar ones.
Finally, market risks are the most uncontrollable, since they depend on external factors over which there is not always control: interest rates, currencies, financial instruments and market variability, etc.