Organisation of opportunity and risk management
All business fundamentally involves opportunities and risks. Active control of these opportunities and risks is supported within Deutsche Post World Net by a Group-wide opportunity and risk management process. The objective is to strengthen the Group’s firmly established culture of tackling risks and opportunities proactively in order to secure our business success for the long term. The process developed to this end is based on uniform methods and standards for identifying, analysing and communicating the issues concerned.
Tightly integrated into the existing controlling processes are quarterly opportunity and risk identification and reappraisal. This analysis covers events and developments both within and outside the Group that might lead to deviations from the planned course of commercial success. In the event of significant changes, ad-hoc announcements may be issued at any time.
Opportunity and risk analysis also involves the investigation of major influencing factors, the compiling of action plans and determining indicators for the early detection of critical situations. The analysis is performed on a results-orientated basis using scenarios. Opportunities and risks are assigned to managers responsible for taking action as appropriate to exploit the opportunity or control the risk. This helps clarify who is responsible, particularly with cross-cutting issues.
We deploy identical software for recording, reporting and documenting risk throughout the Group. This replicates the multi-level risk reporting structure and ensures that the managers responsible are involved at various strata of the hierarchy. The process is closely integrated with management and control tools, safeguarding regular communication between the controlling function and management. The Board of Management is kept informed by central risk control, which is organisationally part of Corporate Controlling.
Postbank’s risk control system complies with the bank-specific requirements of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (Basel II in line with EU directives) and the Minimum Requirements for Risk Management (MaRisk, laid down by BaFin, Germany’s federal financial supervisory authority). Postbank is also integrated into the Group’s opportunity and risk control process.
We consider the risks set out in the following to be the significant negative factors currently affecting our net assets, financial position and results of operations. However, these are not necessarily the only risks to which the Group is exposed. Risks of which we are currently unaware or which we do not yet consider to be material could also have an adverse effect on our business activities.
