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Webinar: Why Risk Strategy Starts with Trust | Insights from The Risk Within
Updated: Aug 22
On 10 September 2025, over 100 professionals from financial services, fintech, and non-profits registered to our first Ask the Author Q&A, exploring why trust is not a soft skill but the foundation of effective risk management. Across financial services and fintech firms in London and wider Europe, risk leaders are recognising that psychological safety is as critical as capital adequacy for long-term resilience.
The session was based on my book The Risk Within and focused on how psychological safety and trust shape escalation, decision-making under pressure, and early issue detection.
2026 Regulatory Update
Since this webinar was recorded, the regulatory focus on workplace behaviour, individual accountability and organisational culture has continued to develop. The FCA's PS25/23 on non-financial misconduct, including changes to COCON and FIT, takes effect from 1 September 2026.
For risk leaders, the underlying question remains broader than regulatory compliance: do people feel able to raise concerns, challenge assumptions and escalate weak signals before they become material issues?
The discussion below explores why trust and psychological safety are fundamental to that capability.
You can watch to the full event below:
Psychological Safety as a Strategic Capability
Psychological safety is essential for risk visibility through psychological safety and effective governance. Psychological safety is often treated as a cultural initiative, yet it is far more than that. It is a strategic enabler for risk management, influencing whether weak signals surface early, whether people speak candidly under pressure, and whether decisions reflect reality rather than silence.
In The Risk Within, I define psychological safety as:
A shared belief that it is safe to speak up, ask for help, or raise concerns.
This is not about being “nice” or avoiding conflict. It is about building the conditions for challenge, candour, and accountability.
What the Polls Revealed: Overcoming Cultural Blockers to Risk Escalation in Organisations
Throughout the session, participants engaged in live polls to benchmark their experiences against the wider risk community. The results highlighted the cultural blockers that undermine escalation:
57% of professionals said resistance to change is the biggest barrier to cultural transformation.
45% of middle managers cited lack of leadership backing as the main reason issues are not escalated.
66% identified silence and conformity as the most dangerous cultural signals of risk blindness.
These results confirm what I see across industries: risk frameworks fail when leadership alignment and trust are missing. For UK boards and European regulators, escalation culture is increasingly central to FCA, PRA, and EBA expectations around governance and resilience.
For UK financial services firms, these questions have gained further regulatory relevance. The FCA's PS25/23 on non-financial misconduct strengthens the connection between workplace behaviour, individual accountability and conduct, with changes to COCON and FIT taking effect from 1 September 2026.ree Practical Shifts for Leadership Accountability in Risk Governance
In the discussion, I shared three practical shifts any leader can apply to strengthen risk dialogue:
Make leadership support observable: People watch what leaders do. Model inquiry, thank candour, and close the loop on raised issues.
Remove ambiguity from escalation: Clarify thresholds, channels, and time expectations so people know what good looks like.
Treat silence as data" A period of “no escalation” in a high-change environment is not comfort — it is a warning sign. Ask “What are we not hearing, and why?”
Q&A Highlights
The live Q&A brought the discussion to life, connecting the 7 Principles from The Risk Within to real-world challenges.
🔹 Culture & Escalation
Q: How can organisations overcome the fear of repercussions when raising risks?
A: Fear cannot be solved by process alone; it requires visible leadership behaviour — modelling inquiry, thanking candour, and showing that escalation leads to learning, not blame.
Q: How should global organisations account for cultural differences when building psychological safety?
A: Leaders need cultural intelligence (CQ). That means recognising local norms around deference and candour, creating safe spaces for dialogue in context, while reinforcing global standards of transparency and challenge.
Q: What role does the second line (risk and compliance) have in creating psychological safety?
A: The second line must shift from enforcer to enabler — facilitating conversations, surfacing weak signals, and being trusted escalation partners rather than compliance checkers.
Q: How do you know if silence in escalation means stability or hidden risk?
A: Silence is data. In dynamic environments, a lack of escalation usually signals suppression, not safety. Leaders must ask “What are we not hearing, and why?”
Q: Can psychological safety be measured in a meaningful way?
A: Yes. Surveys can capture perceptions, but observation of behaviour — who speaks up, who hesitates, how leaders respond — often tells the most powerful story.
🔹 Leadership & Risk Functions
Q: Regarding culture and risk culture, where does trust start from? Does the latter embed it?
A: Trust starts with leadership tone and actions. Risk culture is the structure that embeds this trust into day-to-day practices of escalation, decision-making, and accountability. Without trust, culture becomes box-ticking.
Q: Why do you think leaders seem to be inherently fearful of having a strong & relevant risk function?
A: Some leaders see risk as a constraint on growth rather than an enabler. A strong risk function challenges assumptions and exposes uncomfortable truths. Secure leaders embrace this; insecure leaders resist it.
Q: When budgets are tight, risk initiatives are often first to be cut. Does this mean leaders don’t believe in the function’s value?
A: This isn’t about leaders not believing in risk, but about how the function is framed. Risk is too often presented by its own leadership as a cost centre, focused on compliance and controls, which makes it an easy target in cost-cutting cycles. The deeper issue is that risk outcomes are what didn’t happen, which makes their value harder to quantify in budget meetings.
If risk is instead positioned as a strategic capability that protects value, strengthens trust, and enables decision-making under pressure. Only then it is viewed not as expendable but as essential. The challenge for risk leaders is to reframe their role from compliance guardians to strategic enablers of resilience and growth.
The Risk Within provides a roadmap for embedding psychological safety into risk management. It identifies critical touch points across the risk lifecycle and offers clear actions to align leadership, culture, and governance. It is designed to help risk functions integrate more deeply into the business and strengthen decision-making at every level.
What Attendees Said
Feedback from participants reflected both the urgency of the topic and the value of practical, experience-based dialogue:
“Julien is talking about a very important topic in risk that has been neglected for far too long.”
“Expert perspective, real examples, and moments to reflect.”
Next Steps
This was just the start of the conversation. To continue building trust into risk strategies:
📅 Join the next Ask the Author Q&A (15 October 2025) → Seeing What You’re Missing: Leadership Blind Spots in Risk Escalation
Final Reflection
One of the closing prompts from the session was:
Where in your organisation does silence delay escalation — and what one step can you take this month to build visible leadership support?
I encourage you to reflect on this question with your team. In the context of EU compliance frameworks and UK regulatory standards, embedding trust into risk culture is not optional — it is a strategic necessity and the infrastructure of resilient governance and effective risk management.
About the Author: Julien Haye
Managing Director of Aevitium LTD and former Chief Risk Officer with over 26 years of experience in global financial services and non-profit organisations. Known for his pragmatic, people-first approach, Julien specialises in transforming risk and compliance into strategic enablers. He is the author of The Risk Within: Cultivating Psychological Safety for Strategic Decision-Making and hosts the RiskMasters podcast, where he shares insights from risk leaders and change makers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is psychological safety important in risk management?
Psychological safety helps people raise concerns, challenge assumptions and escalate emerging risks without fear of negative consequences. This improves risk visibility and allows leaders to act on weak signals before they develop into more significant issues.
What is the relationship between trust and risk culture?
Trust creates the conditions in which risk culture operates effectively. When employees trust that concerns will be heard and handled constructively, they are more likely to speak openly, challenge decisions and escalate risks. Leadership behaviour plays a central role in establishing and maintaining that trust.
How can leaders strengthen psychological safety?
Leaders can make their support visible by inviting challenge, responding constructively when concerns are raised and demonstrating that escalation leads to action rather than blame. Clear escalation thresholds and channels also reduce uncertainty about when and how concerns should be raised.
What does silence tell leaders about organisational risk?
Silence should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that risks are under control. In changing or complex environments, limited escalation can indicate that concerns are not being identified, raised or heard. Leaders should consider what information may be missing and why.
What role should Risk and Compliance play in psychological safety?
Risk and Compliance can support psychological safety by acting as trusted partners in escalation. Their role extends beyond enforcing frameworks and controls to facilitating constructive challenge, identifying weak signals and helping concerns reach the appropriate decision-makers.