Governance
Define mandates, decision rights, policy hierarchy and escalation thresholds.
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Specialised practice · GRC
Governance, risk and assurance: one oversight structure.
Oversight reaches your board in fragments: a risk register here, a compliance tracker there, an audit plan that tests neither. We build the framework, the risk discipline, the obligation map and the internal audit capability as one structure that reports coherently upward.
One structure, coherent oversight
Connect the disciplines.
Answer the board once.
Risk, compliance and audit only become useful oversight when mandates, evidence and escalation operate as one structure rather than parallel reporting exercises. This is governance, risk and compliance consultancy in its working sense: we build the structure and the discipline, not a platform to record them in.
GRC
One governed structure for authority, risk, obligations and assurance.
- Mandates and decision rights
- Risk appetite and tolerance
- Obligation ownership
- Assurance planning
- Board reporting
Risk management
Keep risk registers active and connect appetite to action when tolerance is crossed.
Compliance
Map laws, regulators, standards and contracts to accountable owners and evidence.
Internal audit
Build the universe, risk-based plan, working papers and internal capability.
Board reporting
Calibrate dashboards and escalation routes to what each governing body must see.
Integrated evidence
Connect registers, controls, findings and actions so oversight stands up to scrutiny.
Report once.Connect risk, compliance and assurance evidence before it reaches committees, so leadership receives one coherent position rather than competing answers.
Pre-audit readiness
An audit is coming. Close the findings first.
When a certification audit, surveillance visit, regulator inspection or licence renewal is weeks away, the work changes character: it becomes a race to find and close what the examiner will find. We run a focused gap assessment against the exact criteria you will be audited under and conduct a mock audit led by senior practitioners who have sat on the auditor's side of the table. From there we drive prioritised remediation of nonconformities across documentation, process and training, through to the close-out evidence the examiner expects to see.
An engagement of this kind, for a regulated healthcare supplier facing licence renewal, appears in our representative experience.
Vendor & third-party risk
Your risk now includes your suppliers'.
UAE regulators have made third-party risk a first-order obligation. The CBUAE Outsourcing Regulation requires banks to run due diligence and continuing oversight of service providers; ADGM's Cyber Risk Management Framework formalises vendor risk governance for regulated firms; and under the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL), appointing a processor does not remove the controller's own data-protection obligations, and controllers and processors each carry duties relevant to vendor governance and breach management. These requirements make supplier oversight a continuing organisational responsibility, although the allocation of liability depends on the applicable law and circumstances.
A note on durability
Governance that outlasts its authors.
Most governance failure is undramatic, a quiet attrition: the risk champion resigns and the register stops moving; the compliance tracker lives in one person's spreadsheet; the audit plan repeats last year's because nobody re-examined the risks. Oversight built on individuals decays at the rate individuals leave.
We build architecture instead: decision rights, obligations, evidence and reporting arranged so the structure holds regardless of who occupies it. The test we design against is simple: two years from now, under different people, does the framework still describe how the organisation runs in practice? The aim is a framework that keeps working after the people who built it have moved on.
How the work runs
Four stages, then we leave.
Diagnostic
How governance, risk, compliance and assurance operate today, as evidenced rather than as charted. Where oversight is real, where it is ceremonial, and where it is absent.
Framework design
Governance structure, risk appetite and registers, and the obligations map, designed together so one risk language and one evidence base serve all three.
Capability build
Internal audit methodology and programme built on a risk-based approach appropriate to the organisation's audit mandate, with management-system audits conducted in line with ISO 19011, your auditors coached through live audits, working papers and reporting brought to a standard that survives external review.
Operating rhythm
The review and reporting cadence that keeps the structure alive: management reviews, committee packs and escalation exercised until they run without us.
Roles are explicit: our practitioners design, coach and quality-review; your team owns and operates the framework. The objective is a capability that no longer needs us.
Typical deliverables
What an engagement typically produces.
Configured to scope; a proposal states exactly which apply.
- Governance structure and decision-rights map
- Risk appetite statement
- Risk register with owners and escalation thresholds
- Compliance obligations register
- Internal-audit universe, methodology and plan
- Audit reports
- Board reporting pack
Is this the right service?
Where one oversight structure is the answer.
- The board or audit committee wants risk, compliance and audit reporting that holds together.
- Both regulators expect a governance and risk framework that demonstrably operates.
- Internal audit capability must be built or uplifted to survive external review.
- The requirement is one certified management system rather than oversight: ISO 27001 or ISO 9001.
- You need a statutory or financial-statement audit: appoint a licensed audit firm; we are not a statutory auditor.
- Several governance domains need one architecture at group level: Enterprise Governance Architecture.
Scope boundary
Where independence begins.
ExSolution may design governance and control arrangements and may undertake separately agreed advisory or internal-audit work. We do not present work over arrangements we designed or implemented as independent assurance. Where an independent conclusion is required, it must come from an appropriately independent provider that did not design or implement the subject matter. Statutory audit and regulator-conferred assurance remain outside our scope.
Delivery
A named Engagement Lead.
The proposal names the Engagement Lead responsible for coordinating the governance and risk consultancy work, client communication and delivery. A second senior practitioner, not involved in day-to-day delivery, provides quality review. Team size is configured to scope, from a focused internal-audit uplift to a full oversight framework.
How we work →Questions buyers ask
Straight answers.
Is this outsourced internal audit?
Our focus is building your own internal audit capability: the audit plan, the methodology and the people to run it. If you need delivery support while that capability matures, we can work alongside your team. Any delivery support is scoped so that ExSolution does not assume management responsibility or present review of its own design work as independent assurance. We are not a statutory auditor and do not audit financial statements.
We're ADGM or DIFC regulated. Does this address what our regulator expects?
The engagement can be mapped to the applicable ADGM or DIFC requirements and supervisory expectations. The regulator determines whether the resulting arrangements are adequate; no consultant can guarantee supervisory acceptance. Both regulators look for a governance and risk framework that demonstrably operates, not documents prepared for an inspection, so we build the framework such that everyday use produces the evidence.
We already have a risk register. Why isn't it changing anything?
Most registers list risks but change nothing, because three connections are missing: a clear statement of how much risk the organisation will accept, a named owner for each risk with the authority to act, and agreed points at which issues escalate. We put those three connections in place.
How does this relate to our ISO management systems?
Very closely. Your ISO systems already run risk assessments, internal audits and management reviews, so a separate governance, risk and compliance (GRC) framework would duplicate all three. We build oversight on the same risk language and evidence they already produce; where several governance domains run at once, see enterprise governance architecture.
Governance readiness, candidly scored
Our diagnostic suite includes structured self-assessments across governance, risk and internal audit readiness, the same questions we ask in a diagnostic, arranged for you to answer first.
Experience across sectors and systems.
Explore representative anonymised assignments across government, aviation, healthcare, retail and real estate, manufacturing, and maritime services.
Ready for oversight that holds together?
Tell us where the structure is fragmenting: the register, the obligations, the audit plan or the board pack. We aim to respond within two business days.
Related: Enterprise Governance Architecture · Information Security – ISO 27001 · ESG Reporting