HighQuest Board Red Flag Perspective Featured in Prominent Magazine
Sunday, January 15, 2006
New York, NY, (January 15, 2006) - HighQuest Partners announced today that Financial Solutions International (FSI), a leading Risk Management Magazine for the Financial Services Industry, has published in its Winter 2005/2006 edition an in depth article written by Thomas Bartlett of HighQuest Partners, describing the importance of Red Flag reporting for Boards of Directors. The article makes the case that increased accountability and responsibility expected of Boards heightens the importance of having in place effective systematic reporting mechanisms to capture minor incidents and precursors of potentially serious ethics, compliance, financial, and operational risks. As company management has the ability to mask, alter, or deemphasize growing risks, Boards should be seeking to systematically view objective risk indicators, called "red flags" or crisis precursors. The article's author remarks "gone are the days when Boards implicitly trusted management. Boards today are not only concerned about hidden risks, they are "on the hook" legally to do everything in their powers to work with management to effectively control risks of the corporations they oversee." This development has significant implications for management and its dealings with Board members and for the Boards themselves. While Board Red Flag reports do not interfere with the trust between the Board and senior management, they put Board members in a better position to understand and take action on the higher profile risks that may impact their companies. Tom Bartlett, who has experience in designing and building red flag management information systems for major companies, offers examples of red flag reports implemented in major industries and describes the multiple ways that such reports add value.
About ComplianceQuest Partners, LLC
ComplianceQuest Partners, LLC and affiliate of HighQuest Partners, LLC provides compliance and related BPO services to the insurance and securities industries. The firm, which is a National Field Partner for LIMRA's Supervision and Compliance Audit Network program, specializes in helping clients identify and mitigate compliance and ethics risk, and build top quality compliance and ethics programs and processes. Special areas of expertise range from NASD mandated consulting to IMSA independent assessments, compliance risk mapping and risk assessment, compliance and sales ethics training, and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.