What we doAdvisory & ConsultancyICAAP & Capital Planning
A capital self-assessment your board can sign with confidence.
Most ICAAPs in the region are written twice — once for the file, once more in a hurry when the examination letter arrives. Risk identification borrowed from a template, quantification nobody in the room can explain, stress results that never touch the capital plan. BIZENIUS rebuilds the ICAAP as the instrument it was meant to be: the document through which a board actually manages capital — and attests to it without flinching.
Where this begins
Three letters this practice usually starts with.
The examination is scheduled
The supervisor has named the date, and the current document was assembled by someone who has since left — nobody now owns the numbers it contains.
The findings letter was longer this year
The ICAAP passed, with observations: weak stress-testing integration, thin board engagement, materiality assessments the examiner called mechanical. Next cycle they expect movement.
The board signs what it cannot defend
Directors attest to a capital position they were shown for forty minutes once a year. One serious question from the supervisor — or an investor — and the attestation is exposed.
What we deliver
Working artefacts, not recommendations.
An ICAAP engagement leaves your institution holding a framework it can run without us. The deliverables are the working parts of that framework — built with your team, documented so the next owner inherits them intact.
The diagnostic read
Your current ICAAP read the way your supervisor will read it — a finding-by-finding account of what the examination will surface, before it does.
The framework itself
Risk identification and materiality assessment grounded in your balance sheet, quantification methods your team can explain, and stress results wired into the capital plan — not stapled to it.
The document set
The board document, the methodology annexes and the supervisory submission — one consistent version of the truth, written to be read, not filed.
The board, prepared
A working session that takes your directors through the framework they are attesting to — the assumptions, the numbers, and the questions the supervisor will put to them.
The next cycle, yours
Your team runs the following annual cycle with our review standing behind them — capability transfer is designed in from the diagnostic, not promised at the end.
How the engagement runs
Diagnose. Design. Build. Embed.
Diagnose
The current framework against the supervisor’s reading — evidence, not opinion, delivered in weeks, not months.
Design
The target ICAAP sized to your institution: risk universe, quantification choices, stress architecture, governance calendar.
Build
Side by side with your capital and risk teams — models, documents and board materials produced together, reviewed in increments.
Embed
Board rehearsal, team training through the Capability Arc, and a framework your institution owns when we leave.
Perimeter and fee are fixed at the diagnostic. A recent Gulf mandate ran fourteen weeks from first reading to a board-approved ICAAP.
Proof
Judged by what changes.
14 weeks
to review, strengthen and finalise an ICAAP through to board approval — one supervisory cycle without findings since
Regional bank · Gulf
Mandate Nº 04
Capital frameworks built to run the bank, not to satisfy a filing
Two African banks · Africa
Asked before engaging
The questions boards and CROs put to us first.
How long does an ICAAP rebuild take?
The perimeter is fixed at the diagnostic, and the duration with it. A recent Gulf mandate ran fourteen weeks from first reading to a board-approved ICAAP; a narrower remediation of specific findings runs shorter. What we will not do is open-ended: the engagement has a defined end, because the framework is meant to be yours, not ours.
Do you write the ICAAP for us, or with us?
With you — deliberately. A document written for you passes one examination and decays. Our practitioners build each component alongside the people who will own it, so the institution that signs the ICAAP is the institution that wrote it.
Who actually does the work?
Senior practitioners who have owned this mandate themselves — former heads of capital management, treasurers and central-bank supervisors, drawn from a bench of 50+ senior consultants who have designed, built and run capital frameworks end to end, from regional banks to global groups. The person who leads your diagnostic leads your engagement. No junior consultants, no generic decks.
What do you need from us?
A named counterpart in risk or finance, access to the current framework and its data, and board time at two points: the design decisions and the final rehearsal. We list everything at the diagnostic — there are no surprise requests mid-engagement.
How is confidentiality handled?
Engagements are confidential by default and remain so. Published mandates in our record are anonymised to client shape — the names are confidential, the outcomes are not — and nothing about your institution is published without written permission.
The Capability Arc™
This practice is one point on the arc.
Most ICAAP clients pair the rebuild with the masterclass that gives their team command of the framework — and the platform that makes it systematic.
Learn it · Training
Basel III Final Reforms & Capital Planning
The masterclass that gives your capital and risk teams command of the framework we build together.
Automate it · Smart IT
Regulatory Capital & Risk Platform
Capital computation, monitoring and supervisory reporting — operationalised on your data, owned by your team.
The ask
Request a confidential framework review.
A senior practitioner reads your current ICAAP the way your supervisor will — and tells you, in a private working session, what the examination will find. No deck, no pitch: a marked-up reading of your own document.
Confidential by default; under NDA on request. A senior practitioner responds within two working days.
ICAAP & Capital Planning
Leave the question with us.
Two lines on the mandate is enough — a senior practitioner replies within one business day.