Chase Cooper, the City-based business compliance specialist will be running a series of workshops on operational risk management during April, May and June this year in Central London. The workshops are intended for delegates from banks and insurance companies who are seeking to extend their knowledge and understanding of operational risk and bring themselves up-to-date with the most recent requirements of the Basel II compliance directives.

Chase Cooper ran the first series of workshops in 2005 to help fill a gap in experience and skills amongst staff working in operational risk in the financial sector. They observed that with the increase in activities associated with Basel II many of their clients were re-deploying or taking on staff that had either no knowledge of operational risk or who lacked up-to-date knowledge and the confidence to develop and implement operational risk strategies. Two different workshops are available, the first on "Operational Risk Essentials", and the second an "Intermediate Operational Risk Workshop" for those who have been working in operational risk for some time but are seeking to extend their skills and experience.

The intermediate level workshop provides delegates with the opportunity to learn through involvement in practical exercises designed to help them in areas such as - gathering risk and control assessment data - producing key risk indicators - collecting and using loss event data - producing risk reports - monitoring and measuring risk appetite - preparing operational risk action plans.

During the workshop the delegates are helped to build a personal action plan to assist them to implement what they have learned in the immediate period following the workshop. To help with this they have access to a free telephone-based mentoring service after the workshop.

The workshops will be led by Phil Robinson-Welsh and Tony Blunden from Chase Cooper. Phil has 18 years of experience as a business and IT auditor for financial institutions and has specialised in operational risk since 1999. Tony Blunden has worked in the City of London for over 30 years, primarily in the area of risk management. Until joining Chase Cooper as Director of Consulting he was Director of Operational Risk in the Financial Services Risk Management Practice at Ernst and Young.

Further information on the workshops can be obtained from Lisa Chisnall +44 (0)1202 724801 or by email to .