Chris Baker
Chris Baker

Chris Baker

Partner, Risk Advisory

Sydney

+61 2 9258 6648 | +61 414 208 387
chris.baker@ashurstperkins.com

Introduction

Chris is a very experienced Risk Advisory Partner with a wealth of knowledge in the areas of financial services compliance, regulatory, conduct, and execution risk.

Chris Baker is a partner who plays a key role in Ashurst Perkins Coie’s risk practice by leveraging his experience in providing strategic advice to the C suite and Boards across compliance, regulatory, conduct, and execution risk.

Chris brings more than 30 years of combined executive and advisory experience to help clients anticipate, manage and resolve risk. Chris's executive experience in blue chip financial services organizations means he understands that clients need pragmatic solutions that balance regulatory expectations with business imperatives. 

Chris has worked on some of the Australia's largest regulatory and conduct issues including complex regulatory investigations resulting from issues examined at the Royal Commission into misconduct in financial services and subsequent enforcement, uplift programs and consumer remediation.

To complement his regulatory and conduct risk and compliance focus, Chris also advises on strategic execution risk based on his deep experience in business and technology transformation and post M&A integration and separation . 

  • Compliance Uplift – Tier one banks and superannuation funds needed to embed regulatory obligations into their enterprise risk and compliance frameworks. The complexity lay in aligning the Ashurst Obligations Management Solution (OMS) with existing control libraries, risk taxonomies and regulatory change management processes. As Lead Risk Advisory Partner for OMS, Chris has advised multiple clients on the integration approach, enabling clients to systematically track and manage their regulatory obligations.
  • Remediation Design – A major superannuation fund identified failures in death benefit claims handling that required member and claimant remediation. The fund faced challenges in designing a remediation program that was fair to claimants while operationally executable at scale. Chris advised on the remediation design and program execution framework.
  • Independent Expert Report – A major superannuation fund was required to demonstrate to ASIC that its member remediation program was effective. The regulator required independent assurance on both the design and operating effectiveness of the remediation. Chris provided an independent expert report to ASIC on the program’s effectiveness.
  • Incident Management Framework – A major superannuation fund lacked a cohesive incident management framework to identify, escalate and resolve operational and compliance incidents. Without clear governance, reporting lines and escalation protocols, incidents risked being mismanaged. Chris led the design of the governance framework including policies, reporting structures and committee charters.
  • Breach Reporting – A tier 1 bank needed to establish a compliant breach reporting process under the RG 78 regime. The volume and complexity of potential reportable situations required an integrated legal and risk approach to triage effectively. Chris helped design and operationalized a managed service to triage and process breach reporting.
  • Complaints Management – A major superannuation fund faced a significant backlog of member complaints due performance issues at a third party provider and process inefficiencies. The accumulating complaints created regulatory and reputational risk while underlying performance and process issues perpetuated the problem. Chris led the project to clear the complaints backlog and provide the client with a roadmap of process improvements to prevent recurrence.
  • Compliance Framework Design – A mid-tier bank was required to redesign its compliance framework to meet regulatory requirements imposed under license conditions. The bank needed to balance regulatory expectations with its operational capacity and resources. Chris designed a new compliance framework that satisfied the regulatory requirements.
  • Strategic Execution Review – A tier 1 banks Board and executive leadership team sought to understand the bank's capability to effectively and efficiently execute strategic initiatives. The challenge was assessing how effectively BAU and project budgets were being deployed to deliver against the bank's stated strategic goals. Chris delivered a detailed report to the board and executive team on the bank’s strategic execution capability with recommendations for improvement.
  • Regulatory Notice Responses – A major superannuation trustee received multiple concurrent regulatory notices and faced investigations requiring coordinated responses. The range and complexity of the regulatory inquiries required careful risk assessment and response management. Chris worked with the Ashurst disputes team on the response strategy and risk assessment across the various regulatory matters.

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