Wilhelm Koch

Managing Director, Global Head of Non-Financial Risk Management at DWS

Speaker

Wilhelm Koch is an architect of institutional decision governance with more than 25 years of international leadership experience in global financial institutions and advisory firms. He has served in executive roles including Managing Director, Global Head and board-level mandates, working directly with executive boards, supervisory boards and regulators across Europe.

In senior positions at DWS Group, Deloitte, Erste Group Bank AG and Deutsche Bank, he designed governance, compliance and non-financial risk architectures during periods of deep structural transformation. His work integrates regulatory expectations, strategic decision responsibility and organizational resilience.

Koch’s central contribution is the development of a decision-centric governance approach that treats decisions as adjudicable acts. By institutionalizing structured judgment, organizations can strengthen accountability, reduce hindsight bias and create defensible governance under uncertainty.

His work bridges management practice and institutional theory, connecting strategy, risk, power dynamics and accountability into a coherent governance architecture.