Excellence in Risk Management — From Reporting Structure to Emerging Risks

Webcast panel discussion covered findings from this year’s “Excellence in Risk Management” report, leading mitigation strategies, risk management metrics, and more.

Is risk management properly positioned for the greatest impact?

Companies’ risks change with ever-increasing speed, driving a need for new ways to model and analyze them in order to provide timely information to boards and other leaders. That was one of the messages from a panel of risk experts during Marsh’s The New Reality of Risk webcast.

“Risk is increasingly a top issue on the board agenda,” said John Drzik, president of Marsh Global Risk and Specialties. “So we are seeing forward-looking organizations trying to distill the insights and intelligence coming from their risk analysis to where it can hit key points for executives and the board.” Doing so, he said, “requires risk to be more connected to organizational strategy.”

One way that companies are responding to the need is by investing in risk-related data, analytics, and technology: An online poll during the webcast found that more than 70% of audience respondents expected their organizations to increase investments in these areas in the coming two years.

That was a higher percentage (42%) than responded similarly to the question in the 2015 Excellence in Risk Management survey, on which the webcast was largely based.

The panel discussed a range of other risk topics from the survey, including organizational reporting structures, cyber, and emerging risks.

Other panel members included:

• Carol Fox, the director of Strategic and Enterprise Risk at RIMS, The Risk Management Society, which co-sponsors the annual Excellence survey with Marsh.
• Julie Pemberton, director of Enterprise Risk, Insurance, and Claims Management at Outerwall Inc.
• Brian Elowe, managing director with Marsh’s Global Risk Management division.

Listen to the webcast replay