What I learned from banking

The most valuable thing I got from my time at UBS wasn’t the money, though that was nice. It was the freedom — taken, though not always sanctioned — to notice what didn’t quite add up. 

That changed everything.

I 𝘸𝘢𝘴 hired to notice things. 

But only certain things: Control failures. Risk exposures. Process gaps. 

Important things that featured in audits, dashboards and regulatory inspections.

But I also noticed other things.

• Training that looked good on paper but didn’t land;

• A workflow that quietly created the risk it claimed to prevent; 

• That moment when someone opened their mouth to challenge a decision, then thought better of it.

None of that was officially in scope. Sometimes, it wasn’t welcome. But I noticed anyway.

Over time, I realised: that kind of noticing — not what the system tells you to see, but what it quietly ignores — wasn’t just a habit. It was the work I was 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘵 to do.

And if I wanted to keep doing it, I couldn’t stay inside the system. So I built my own.

That's how Human Risk came about.

Not everyone has a 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 like that. 

But if you do — something you keep doing for the right reasons, even when no one asks, even when it’s not rewarded, even when it might get you into trouble — it’s worth paying attention to.

Even if it’s in the organisation’s best interest, it might not be in the room’s. 

That doesn’t make it wrong. It might just mean it matters.