Matthew Pirera

Matt is a managing director in Protiviti Australia’s risk and compliance team and is responsible for leading the delivery of best practice solutions across Protiviti’s key clients. Matt is the national financial services industry lead, also leading the Protiviti Australia financial crime risk and compliance solution.

Having spent over 15 years working in the professional services and industry in Australia and internationally, Matt has deep expertise in risk, financial crime, compliance, assurance, financial reporting, regulatory reporting, and business performance improvement.

Matt has in-depth experience working with senior executives and senior regulatory stakeholders and is an experienced presenter at risk committees and boards.

Major projects and accomplishments

• Neo-bank financial crime integration: Matt led the financial crime uplift programme for the digital offering of one of Australia’s Big Four banks. The engagement involved the identification of key financial crime compliance gaps and the designing and implementing solutions to address these gaps.
• Compliance event management framework: Matt led the development and implementation of an end-to-end risk and compliance event management framework. This also involved developing an approach for reporting to regulators in line with the institution’s risk appetite requirements.
• Second-line assurance team: Matt led the creation of a second-line assurance/monitoring team at a big four Australian bank. This second-line team was responsible for the execution of thematic assurance reviews covering financial crime obligations. In developing a team of 17 second-line assurance professionals, new policy and procedure documents were also required to be created and implemented. This included the thematic assurance review methodology (concepts aligned to an Internal Audit methodology), the annual assurance plan, governance frameworks and various second-line guidance documents.
• APRA regulatory reporting: Matt partnered with a big four Australian bank over several years to lead the delivery of several strategic regulatory reporting initiatives. This included implementing Bank Levy reporting requirements (including APRA reporting and governance requirements), Productivity Commission responses and leading the Controls and Compliance stream for implementing APRA’s Economic and Financial Statistics reforms.
• Telco assurance: Matt led a joint recurring controls assurance (including ITGC) engagement between a large Australian telco and an Australian government organisation tasked with designing and building Australia’s National Broadband Network.
• Revenue maximisation – Matt led a revenue maximisation project focused on preventing and identifying revenue leakage. This involved mapping end-to-end processes and controls and liaising with key strategic customers. This engagement resulted in an uplift of more than $30 million in the entity’s top-line revenue and a root cause analysis that identified opportunities to resolve process weaknesses.
• Product and plan simplification – Matt managed a large telco’s product and plan simplification project. Through the insights delivered via data analytics and financial modelling, a toolkit was developed that provided the entity with a self-serve capability for product and plan exit strategies. 

Areas of expertise

• Risk management
• Compliance
• Assurance
• Financial and regulatory reporting
• Financial crime / AML risk and compliance
• Remediation

Industry experience

• Financial services
• Media and telecommunications
• Transport and logistics
• Real estate

Professional memberships and certifications

• The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and New Zealand

Education

• Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting and Finance), The University of Melbourne