Barloworld Limited: Leading Brands

Our risk philosophy

Our risk philosophy continues to be anchored on the concept of embracing risk as both hazards and opportunities. Our emerging risk radar highlights 10 emerging risks that present as threats while three emerging risks present as opportunities for the group for the prospective 24-month period.

As an emerging trend, the key concerns for the risk committee were identified across three broad categories of emerging risks:

• The availability of the artificial intelligence (AI) skill set, cybersecurity and data security
• Geopolitical instability, both live and emerging
• Regulatory uncertainty, interstate conflict, social unrest, war, geopolitics of AI, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), increased political polarisation and the US/China conflict.

Key considerations over the next two years for the group have been identified as:

• opportunities to test and scale AI
• opportunities to strengthen crossborder data and technology governance.

Risk governance

With risk fully embedded into strategy setting, our board remains responsible for overseeing risks and opportunities not limited only to those identified as part of the risk management cycle but those that are emerging in nature as well. They continue to entrust the risk committee with the task of ongoing supervision of the group’s enterprise risk management (ERM) activities in line with the approved risk management framework that articulates the three lines of defence model, which are the guardrails within which risk management is applied at Barloworld.

Risk framework

Our approved risk management framework provides clear guardrails outlining key responsibilities for the risk management process oversight. The risk management team within Barloworld uses the framework to make recommendations on appetite setting, strategy alignment, policy setting and overall risk governance.

Risk process

With the adoption of a risk and resilient framework, the 11 building blocks underscoring our commitment to risk management were integrated into a uniform setting to collectively describe the risk procedure within Barloworld.

• Policies, standards and guidelines
• Methodology
• Risk and business continuity plans
• Appetite and tolerance
• Governance and reporting
• Networking and collaboration
• Risk assurance and cause analysis
• Performance benchmarking and maturity evaluation
• Business continuity management
• Disaster management
• Simulation exercises