Our experience has taught us that the help that different kinds of risk management leaders need is different, depending on the nature of their role and especially the type and maturity of the company they’re working in. That’s why it’s important to us at Choir to tailor our platform and services to our customers. 

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These are the main groups we’re aiming to help. If you fall into one of them - we’d love to help you, too. If you don’t, we’d love to chat and learn more about your needs.

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Founder of an early stage startup

A founder at an early stage startup has a million things on their mind, and on their plate. A lot of them are urgent. Very few founders get into it thinking, “As we pull everything together and try to make it work, my top priority is risk management.”

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In fact many founder teams start with only a basic understanding of what risk management means, before they make the dive into practical entrepreneurship. A lot of them, especially in fintech, end up getting a crash course when their ideas collide with diverse aspects of risk management, from financial loss to fraud attacks, to regulatory considerations, policy and vendor requirements, and so on.

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Learning on the job is powerful, but it also means you are spending time and resources on your own learning curve. And your time and resources as an early stage founder are your most valuable commodity. Getting a firm grasp on the relevant material is very challenging with risk management, which includes understanding complex interlocking ecosystems of payments, fraud, credit, compliance and more. 

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Moreover, getting a broad understanding is not enough; founders need to be able to apply it to their own data, and use that data to investigate the risk patterns and profiles of their nascent company, fix anything that’s problematic, and incorporate learnings into their growth. Fast.

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At Choir, we aim to help founders at early stage startups:

• Reach a good working understanding of risk management quickly
• Empower them to think strategically about risk management and how to incorporate it wisely to reach their main company goals
• Provide them with the analysis and insights needed to make data-informed decisions about their products and priorities
• Make sure that they are able to extract as much valuable information as possible from their own data 
• Give them access to a wide variety of risk management materials customized for their specific needs

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Executive in Series A-C startup

If an on-the-job crash course in risk management is challenging for founders, things get even more high pressure for C-level executives in startups at the Series A-C stage. 

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By this point, basic risk management policies and tools are generally in place, and the relevant stakeholders have a functional grounding of at least the fundamentals of risk management. But the impact of risk management decisions and difficulties increases tremendously in scale and impact as the company grows. 

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At the same time, things become more difficult to track as systems and processes evolve quickly to adapt to the company’s changing needs and priorities. This presents a real problem for executives who need to be able to make decisions under pressure that are based on reliable data - but don’t have easy access to the facts they need, or the time or resources to get them. 

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At Choir, we aim to help executives at Series A-C startups:

• Ensure they know which data points they need, and how to use them to guide their company risk management strategy
• Streamline the process of accessing the information they need so that it’s at their fingertips in easy, automated fashion
• Make sure the insights are in useable, comprehensible form that ties directly into business priorities and needs
• Get actionable bottom lines that execs can push their teams to execute on

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Team Leader in a Mature Fintech or Bank

A risk management leader in a mature fintech is a subject matter expert who understands all the important material and its complexities. They know what they need to know, and they know what they need. What they often lack is the capabilities they need, and the resources to build them. 

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Particularly in companies which grew very quickly, or companies whose evolution included a dramatic pivot of some kind, data storage, code and processes can contain elements that are counter-intuitive or difficult to work with. Things that grow up in a hurry, or are changed in a rush, are rarely designed with risk management analytics in mind. 

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Leaders need to upgrade their risk management framework to match the company’s mature goals and priorities. This may involve making regular reporting an accurate, automated process so that the leader and relevant stakeholders have actionable, reliable information flowing in, or require investing in educational outreach to both other departments and executives, or mean building ways to combine different data sources to get the necessary authoritative numbers. 

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At Choir, we aim to help risk management leaders in mature fintechs:

• Ensure they have the right, reliable risk analytics insights they need into their business performance
• Have a simple, automated process for generating regular reports
• Are able to put together presentations using the data using a streamlined, easy process
• Can confidently make data-driven recommendations for action

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Risk Management Analyst in a Financial Institution

Mature financial institutions have all the groundwork of risk management firmly in place, but the focus tends to be on making sure that the daily urgent tasks and routine work is always under control. This can make it difficult for risk management folks to invest in taking their performance to the next level, which is a loss for both the company and the individual. It can also at times mean that it has been a while since their systems, work processes, and data analysis were last updated or revisited.

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There’s additional pressure when it comes to thinking about the insights that are not needed for daily work, but which can provide tremendous value for the organization. This is often strategic rather than tactical, such as understanding which channels or partners are particularly important from the risk management perspective (for good or bad!) or taking a high level view to identify where problems are originating. 

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Risk management professionals often struggle to find the time or resources required to think through what their company would most benefit from knowing that isn’t yet known, and work out how to easily access that information on a regular basis. They know this is how they could make the most impact, but pulling away from the day-to-day tasks can be a very tall order.

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At Choir, we aim to help risk management analysts in financial institutions:

• Identify what they need to know in order to develop strong value-adding insights
• Easily pull together data from diverse sources into one coherent picture
• Be confident in the conclusions they draw from that combined understanding of the data
• Level up their training and tools to take their performance from “good” to “amazing”

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We're Here to Help

Whatever stage you and your company are at, if you’re a risk management professional in a fintech or financial institution, we would love to be able to make your day-to-day easier, and streamline things to give you more time to focus on the bigger challenges. We’re happy to help you think through your challenges and what the solutions might look like, even if Choir isn’t one of those solutions. 

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If you’d like to see how we might be able to be of help to you, or just chat about what you are going through - contact us.

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We’d love to chat. We’d love to help.