Be more Computer Savvy

Uber's self-driving car equipped with a lot of sensors.
Copyright Forbes.com

Who among you here considered yourselves techies? Is there anyone who does not know how to use a personal computer? How about smartphone? Do you think computer skills are very important in today's fast-paced generation?

Almost everything that we do are either done through computers or managed by computers. We interact with them from the time we wake up in the morning up to the time we sleep. Even the number of sleep hours that we have are sometimes managed by computers. We are surrounded by data and information that are mostly processed by these machines. From the billboards that you see in the streets up to that tiny gadget in your hand. And computers nowadays are becoming smarter, faster, and better as more codes and data are produced and processed. There will be a time that these computers will perform much better than humans do.

According to a leading scientific "futurologist", computer power will match the intelligence of human beings within the next 20 years because of the accelerating speed at which technology is advancing. Furthermore, an academic publication titled "The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerization" tells us that about 47% of all jobs will be taken by robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI).  Recent innovations such as Uber's self-driving cars, Apple's personal assistant Siri, and Amazon's Go Cashless Shopping are slowly replacing some of the clerical jobs.

Maintaining Effective Internal Controls

Extent of damage of the Bangladesh Bank heist.
Photo owned by cnnphilippines.com

On July 2017, Maria Victoria Lopez, head of Metrobank's Corporate Service Management was arrested for stealing Php1.75billion from the Bank through a fake loan account.

On February 2016, unidentified hackers managed to steal over $81-million from Bangladesh Bank's account at the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve using fraudulent orders directed to the SWIFT payments system. The heist resulted to the arrest of former Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) branch Manager Maia Deguito for several violations of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001 (AMLA).

Another big incident which involved the country's oldest bank, Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), affected 1.5 million depositors involving a major system glitch. The glitch resulted to a double posting of bank transactions which was caused by the Programmer bypassing her supervisor's approval.

The three real examples that I had mentioned perfectly describe the concept of fraud and error which are significant costs in doing business. Do you think we can lessen the probability of happening and the impact of these unfortunate events?

Fortunately, there are several ways. And these ways are part of the Company's risk management activities which are applicable to all types of organizations regardless of size. Part of these activities are implementing appropriate controls.