Wells Fargo 2015 Annual Report Download - page 61

The Board and the Operating Committee have overall and
ultimate responsibility to provide oversight for our three lines
of defense and the risks we take, and carry out their oversight
through governance committees with specific risk management
responsibilities described below.
Board Oversight of Risk
The business and affairs of the Company are managed under
the direction of the Board, whose responsibilities include
overseeing the Company’s risk management structure. The
Board carries out its risk oversight responsibilities directly and
through the work of its seven standing committees, which all
report to the full Board.
Each Board Committee has defined authorities and
responsibilities for considering a specific set of risk issues, as
outlined in each of their charters and as summarized in Table
16, and works closely with management to understand and
oversee the Company’s key risk exposures. Allocating risk
responsibilities among each Board committee increases the
overall amount of attention devoted to risk management.
The Risk Committee serves as a focal point for enterprise-
wide risk issues, overseeing all key risks facing the Company.
In this role, the Risk Committee supports and assists the
Board's other standing committees as they consider their
specific risk issues. The Risk Committee includes the chairs of
each of the Board’s other standing committees so that it does
not duplicate the risk oversight efforts of other Board
committees and to provide it with a comprehensive perspective
on risk across the Company and across all individual risk types.
In addition to providing a forum for risk issues at the
Board level, the Risk Committee provides oversight of the
Company's Corporate Risk function and plays an active role in
approving and overseeing the Company’s enterprise-wide risk
management framework established by management to
manage risk, and the functional framework and oversight
policies established by management for each key risk type. The
Risk Committee and the full Board review and approve the
enterprise statement of risk appetite annually, and the Risk
Committee also actively monitors the risk profile relative to the
approved risk appetite.
The full Board receives reports at each of its meetings from
the Board committee chairs about committee activities,
including risk oversight matters, and receives a quarterly
report from the management-level Enterprise Risk
Management Committee regarding current or emerging risk
issues.
Wells Fargo & Company
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