Paul Ford: A Decisive Leader in Financial Services Industry

rnA good leader has the right personality, the right set of skills, knowledge, and an understanding for the industry concerns. Leaders develop vision, inspires other people, and ultimately provide strategy in business success. They rise to the challenges of the global crisis with a good combination of teamwork, power, and appropriate style of leadership. The reason behind the failure of banks to meet the requirements of the global financial crisis was blamed on poor leadership. During such a situation, a visionary leader looks for the best people available for his/her team, set priorities, and start to deal with the most important crisis issues as they occur quickly.

With over 25 years of experience in Operational and Financial services, Paul Ford, the Founder, and CEO of Acin, is on a journey to take the company to its utmost stature. He completed his academic studies, BSc. in Business Administration at the University of Bath. Prior to creating Acin in 2016, Paul founded Anchura Partners in 2010 and grew it to be a highly successful consulting business. Previously, he was the Chief Operating Officer of the ultra-high net worth business at Barclays Wealth and held various C-level positions at Credit Suisse in Europe, Middle-East and Africa.

Financial Crisis Leader

Financial institutions operate in a dynamic environment and competitive conditions. A lot has been already been written about the causes of the global financial crisis, about the CEO’s and CFO’s ineffective supervision and control in financial institutions. The problem the company resolves can be resumed by reference to the fact that financial institutions have reached a critical point. As the financial institutions have reached a critical point post the financial crisis in 2008, the banks have spent billions in building systems and hiring staff to demonstrate that they are in control of the operational risks within their business. With over 25 years of experience in financial services, Paul’s leadership builds a culture that is honest about the company’s present situation, where everyone is encouraged to use their brains to generate the best ideas. His team addresses issues within operational risk which pose a threat to the health of banks.

Lessons Learned through Experiences

Finance involves many types of risks market, interest rate, credit, liquidity, financial, and operational. Keeping an eye on the ball of operational risk is the most basic of all lessons Paul has underlined. Paul says, “As an engineer by training, I was always uncomfortable administering to the symptoms of operational risk, I have been determined to find the ’cure’ – in Acin we have that answer”. Prior to entering corporate life, he enjoyed a successful military career with the British Army; Mr. Ford was a Captain in the Royal Engineers. This engineering background has continued to shape throughout his career and how he thinks about challenges, approaches, and solutions.

Organizational Management

Acin’s highly advanced system of risk identification, management, and mitigation enable connected firms to achieve the highest degrees of protection at an industry level. The Networked Defence Model is a nextgeneration risk management platform. The company has developed a transformation approach and methodology for operational risk management. Paul’s core challenge for Acin is to combine technology, data standards, and content to measure, manage & mitigate operational risk – this relies on Acin’s comprehensive data standards platform.

Strategizing the Market Competition

Acin works and is in production with major client banks in the USA, across Europe and in Asian firms, serving a market size of £1.6bn per annum revenue opportunity. In the longerterm, Paul aims to help firms reduce the amount of operational risk capital needed, and to replicate this across the industry. Acin’s ultimate goal is to help financial institutions reduce their operational risks so that they can be held to an industry standard and demonstrate to regulators that they are in control of their business. Acin has also been recognized as one of the most innovative Regtech companies in 2019.

Achieving Success through Data Standards

Data is exploding, and more and more unstructured data is generated – some of it useful, some of it a distraction. Data evolves all the time, so the company is constantly engaged. As the world’s leading company in risk and control data standards, benchmarking and controls data analysis, Acin enables firms to demonstrate that they are “in control” and provide greater assurance across the industry. The comprehensive data standards platform helps firms to simplify and mitigate operational risk.

About Acin

Founded in 2010, Acin is the world-leading risk and control data standards, benchmarking and controls data analysis company. With offices in London and New York, the organization’s clients include some of the world’s largest financial institutions. It is specialized in risk and controls, regulatory programs, governance, control frameworks, and data standards, etc. The industry enables financial institutions to access standardized controls data seamlessly, allowing agile data-driven risk management and decisionmaking. It relies on a centralized database of control designs smart-mapped to the risks faced by each individual business or function within the organization. Acin sets the standard for the industry, unlocking the full value of controls data for its clients.

What sets Acin apart is its centralised database of control designs smart-mapped to the risks faced by the individual business or function within a financial institution. Data is standardised, available, and reliable – at an industry level. More radical still, is Acin’s ability to connect firms together to create the industry’s first risk and control defence network. With a dataset of risks and controls that is more comprehensive than that of any one institution and continuously updated via the network, this significantly strengthens each firm’s existing “three lines of defence”.

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