UBA Adopts IFRS, BASEL 2, Global Standards in Governance, Financial Reporting, Risk Management

The United Bank for Africa has announced further changes to its financial reporting, governance, risk and control architecture in line with its standard setting history and ongoing commitment to implement industry best practice across its global businesses.
These entail an integrated implementation of key international best practices in risk management, financial reporting, internal controls and corporate governance.
The holistic measures have seen the Bank adopting the advanced approaches of Basel II Prudential Standards, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), and Committee of Standards Organisation (COSO) compliance and plans to implement the South African King III corporate governance code, which will be implemented during the course of this financial year.
Mr. Andre Blaauw, group chief risk officer, UBA Plc said the bank has adopted the advanced approaches of the Basel II standard as a best practice framework for credit, market and operational risk management as well as capital management and risk reporting.
He said integrating Basel II with key business practices, such as risk appetite management, loan pricing, loan portfolio management, performance management, customer segmentation and product planning, has proven to be the key differentiator in the bank’s business model success during the recent financial crisis.
“Banks which have merely adopted Basel II for compliance reasons and have not changed the way they were doing their business ran into problems quickly. Given that the Central Bank of Nigeria has set 2012 as the deadline for Basel II implementation, we do not have an urgent compliance deadline but have decided to adopt Basel II as a key enabler of business management and development” he stated.
UBA has a diverse shareholder base and is currently operating in 13 African countries, with an expectation to be in a further 6 shortly, the US, UK and France, all with different regulatory and accounting standards.
The adoption of IFRS has become an imperative to facilitate the bank’s financial reporting and disclosure standards amongst its diverse stakeholders said Mr. Victor Osadolor, UBA Plc's group chief finance officer.
IFRS is recognized as the global standard for financial reporting. Its most significant impact for Nigerian banks will be in the area of credit provisioning. The IFRS requirements for loan portfolio impairment accounting are rule-based and less subjective than the current practice. 
It is also noteworthy that UBA is also adopting COSO compliance – which relates to the integration of internal audit with wider enterprise risk management. Though COSO is not a Nigerian requirement, as an international bank with a multinational presence, UBA has realized the benefits that the rigour of COSO standard compliance will bring to the robustness of our internal control framework.
UBA plans to commence implementation of COSO, once IFRS is established. COSO certifications will provide added assurance to all stakeholders on the soundness of our control environment.
UBA is already fully compliant with the CBN code on corporate governance, but as a global bank, the adoption of the South African King III Code puts the bank on a par with international peers. Implementation of King III will take place in the last quarter of this financial year. The King Code is widely regarded internationally and King III, the latest version of the code has just been released. 
According to Mr. Blaauw, UBA decided to align with it as the corporate governance code most suitable to an institution with both global and emerging market stakeholder bases, such as UBA.