Improving Operational Risk Management Systems by Formalizing the Basel II Regulation with Goal Models and the ISO/IEC 15504 Approach

The bankruptcy of financial institutions shows the rapid changes in the risks profiles of financial systems and processes. Although financial institutions have always managed the operational risks, the profile of this kind of risks is changing due to the increasing international competitive pressure and the evolution of the financial institutions’ operational systems relying more and more on IT systems. This paper reports the results of the joint research with the CSSF [1] focusing on the formalization of both the Basel II Accord and compliant operational risk management (ORM) systems implementations. This formalization uses concepts of the ISO/IEC 15504 process assessment standard and the concepts of strategy and policy. This structure of the model ensures the traceability between the Basel II Accord and compliant ORM systems implementations, improves the formal validation of those systems and is more adequate to represent all organizational levels of financial institutions.