Ferma building bridges at home and abroad to deliver for members

Ferma is working with european, regional and global risk management associations, as well as the wider risk transfer community, to deliver on its strategic mission to increase leadership in risk management and enhance the profession’s influence. Ferma has been focusing on its new strategic vision during the past year. According to Typhaine Beaupérin, the federation’s CEO, this vision came about because of today’s fast-changing risk landscape. The plan is to help risk and insurance managers take advantage of new found opportunities. “There is a lot of opportunity for risk managers, but they must adapt. We are focusing on helping them succeed in this challenge. So we are working with member associations to raise the profile of the profession through education, sharing of knowledge, best practice and innovative approaches to risk management,” said Ms Beaupérin. Work with Ferma’s member associations has this year helped deliver two of the federation’s big projects – namely its work on cyber risk governance (see related article on page one) and promoting the importance of captives. Ms Beaupérin said these are two illustrations of “fruitful” work carried out in “partnership” with member associations across Europe. “This shows the joint work we can do with them. Ferma acts as the interface between the national associations and the European and international institutions. To be able to do this work, we rely on the input of our member associations and their feedback,” she told CRE. In June, Ferma and the European Confederation of Institutes of Internal Auditing issued a joint cyber risk governance model. This and its accompanying recommendations on cyber governance were put before the EU parliament during the summer. It was warmly received and has helped boost Ferma’s standing in the European corridors of power. “We wanted to stress to the European institutions and other stakeholders that cyber is a governance issue. Our recommendations have been extremely well received by the European institutions. Now they see us as a reliable partner, so we will continue this work,” said Ms Beaupérin. Ferma also published a position paper on captives towards the end of last year in response to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) project to tackle base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). BEPS covered captive arrangements and many are concerned that as a result, captive insurance may come under greater scrutiny from tax authorities. Ferma believes that if the cost of compliance makes captives less attractive, European enterprises would lose important risk-bearing capacity that supports their resilience. The federation’s paper aimed to make the case for captives as important risk management tools, dispelling misperceptions over their use and promoting consistency in the way BEPS principles will be applied. The paper combines the work of many experts and contributions from Ferma’s member associations. It received widespread support and praise, recently winning Ferma the BEPS Initiative Award of the year at the European and UK Captive Awards 2017. Ferma’s position paper was sent to the OECD and national administrations. The federation received a lot of feedback from risk managers saying it was very good guidance, so Ferma decided to turn it into a publication specifically aimed at the corporate world and risk management community. This was released at the Ferma Forum on Sunday. Titled Captives in a Post-BEPS World, it is the first publication from a new Ferma Perspectives series. These will give risk managers information for discussion with senior management on topical issues. More Ferma Perspectives are planned for the years ahead. “We are launching a collection of papers called Ferma Perspectives. The first was on captives and we will have one publication per year going forward, on a different subject matter. We will look at what we produce with the national associations, what is useful for the profession and turn it into a publication. This is another example of how we want to work with the national associations. When we work together we can really drive things forward and make a difference,” said Ms Beaupérin. Ferma is also working with risk management associations outside of Europe on global issues. This is helped by the fact that the Ferma president, Jo Willaert, was elected president of the International Federation of Risk Management Associations (Ifrima) for a two-year term in April. Mr Willaert has said he wants to focus on “strengthening and reinforcing the dialogue and cooperation among risk management associations worldwide” during his presidency of Ifrima, to ensure a coherent response that develops risk management globally. Ms Beaupérin explained that all Ifrima members are making a concerted effort to work more closely on a range of issues. “The objective is to extend the dialogue and cooperation between all the regional associations and national members of Ifrima. We are looking to ensure we are working together on issues with a common interest,” she said. Ferma is specifically working with Ifrima to tackle the issue of global programme rules and compliance, develop its work on captives and further deliver when it comes to risk management certification. “We want to support the recognition, skills and competencies of risk managers around the globe. We have several professional risk manager certifications around the world from Rims, Parima and Ferma. Establishing bridges between the certifications is definitely a path to pursue going forward,” said Ms Beaupérin. Carl Leeman, Ifrima board member and former president of the federation, told CRE that the federation is working to harmonise the growing number of risk management certification schemes and qualifications on offer. “We are working with our member associations to align their work on certification and education. We want to bring people together and facilitate talks between the main regional associations and work towards the harmonisation of risk management qualifications,” said Mr Leeman. Ifrima has been working on a standard for risk management qualifications and certification, drawing on the qualifications already on offer in Europe, the US, Africa and Asia. Ferma also wants to work with insurers, brokers and other service providers to deliver for its members and foster partnership. “We want to work for the whole risk management community and working together with our partners is important to help deliver this. We have close relationships with our partners and are aware of the enormous expertise that exists within these companies,” said Ms Beaupérin. She added: “Insurers tend to underwrite in silos still, but insurance buyers need a more global, holistic insurance product, because you can’t put risk in silos these days. That is why it is important to discuss and work together with our service providers to develop coverage our members want. We have strategic partners and work with them more and more. There is a need from both sides to cooperate. There is a lot of expertise to tap and we want to do this for the benefit of risk managers.” Ferma is hoping that the European Risk Management Awards, launched with Commercial Risk Europe last year, will help encourage best practice among service providers. The second awards event, taking place in London this November, will once again reward excellence in risk management, as well as the companies that deliver some of the tools to help manage and transfer risk. “The awards aim to showcase the achievements of risk managers, but also reward all the risk partners that deliver good service and innovate. We want to encourage innovation in this spirit of competition. For us it is a very important event,” said Ms Beaupérin.

Ferma building bridges at home and abroad to deliver for members

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