ERM governance

If you’ve been handed the task of creating an ERM program for your organization, let me first offer my congratulations quickly followed by my empathy for the task ahead of you. I don’t say that to scare you but to provide a small dose of reality. Building, launching, and refining an ERM program that is…

It’s hard to believe that we’re nearing the end of 2021! Whether it’s improving health, changing eating habits, or some other goal, the New Year always represents a great opportunity for a fresh start. A company’s ERM processes are no different… The end of the year represents an ideal time to take a step back…

For this week’s post, I am sharing an article I wrote for the latest issue of Carrier Management, a quarterly journal for property & casualty insurance executives. Like previous guest editorials in this and other publications, the principles found within this article are applicable to any organization. Unless you have been living on Mars for…

After beginning as a requirement for financial firms, active Board oversight of risk management has increasingly become an expectation, even a necessity, for all types of organizations over the last 20 years. The annual State of Risk Oversight report from North Carolina State University corroborates this. According to their survey, a high number of Boards,…

Regardless of whether it’s an exercise program or business endeavor, there’s a certain energy and excitement when starting something new. We work with great anticipation of the benefits our efforts will bring. But as the old Proverb originally coined in the Robert Burns poem To a Mouse says, “the best laid plans of mice and…

For this week’s post, I would like to share a guest article published in Carrier Management, a quarterly journal targeting P&C insurance executives. Like previous guest editorials, this article was written with a specific industry in mind, but the contents are applicable to any organization. When a company is in its infancy, the main focus…

In times of great upheaval for industries or financial markets, organizations often turn to the formal discipline of enterprise risk management. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis, for example, ERM gained traction as many organizations realized the significant drawbacks of a traditional siloed risk management approach. But widespread ERM adoption remains…

KRIs, KPIs, ORSA, ISO, COSO…risk controls, risk owners, risk appetite. The acronyms, the alphabet soup, oh my! To anyone with little to no experience, risk management jargon can be dizzying and confusing, especially to executives who are often deluged with risk registers, reports, and processes that are overwhelming and not helpful for managing the organization…

No doubt you’ve attended presentations that were unengaging and downright boring. You were glad they were over, but also upset that the last 1-2 hours of your life were a waste. Being on the other side can be even more frustrating, even demoralizing… You spend hours developing an extensive 30 (or even 50!)-slide PowerPoint presentation.…

When first speaking to an organization about ERM, executives know they have a problem, but they usually don’t know what it is, much less how to fix it. All they know is ERM is a possible solution. But before jumping in, I often find trouble spots that need to be addressed first. If they are…