Rising star

Pauline Davoust, global manager of risk and insurance at Gate Group in Switzerland, won Rising Star of the Year at the inaugural European Risk Manager of the Year Awards held late last year. Ahead of this year’s awards, we caught up with Ms Davoust to get the up and coming risk manager’s perspective on some of the big issues from the world of risk and insurance. We also asked why she believes the awards are important and what it meant to win. Ms Davoust told Commercial Risk Europe that winning the Rising Star of the Year was an important milestone in her burgeoning career. “It was recognition of my achievements and efforts, and helped to advertise my work outside of my company and into the risk industry,” she said. Going forward, the risk manager feels the rising star award provides an incentive for young professionals to choose risk management as a career path. More generally the European Risk Manager of the Year Awards are important because they give recognition to the role of risk management and insurance, while bringing people together to share knowledge and provide networking opportunities, says Ms Davoust. So how does this up and coming risk manager view the current state of risk management and its traction within organisations? She believes risk managers are getting better at their jobs and raising their profile, with the European Risk Manager of the Year awards proof of the latter. “Risk management is getting momentum… events like this are the proof,” said Ms Davoust. But as risks become increasingly complex, risk managers must find more efficient ways to deal with them and cannot rest on their laurels, she added. She believes boards are focusing on risk management as part of attempts to deliver top performance, even if it is not the number one topic on the agenda. “In general, senior management is focused on the proper operation of the company, which includes good risk management. Sometimes in the short-term decision-making, risk management is not the top priority, however it is considered most of the time,” Ms Davoust said. Board interest in risk management, and insurance as a mitigation tool, tends to pique when things go wrong or claims strike, she continued. “At periods of low claims activity, the focus is less on risk management and more on the business itself, whereas when a major claim happens the focus is on risk management and prevention,” she explained. Ms Davoust is, in general, a fan of the annual renewal, but she stressed it depends on the line of insurance. In most cases she believes it adds value rather than weighing down insurance buyers with wasted effort. “My preferred way is the annual renewal, which allows a full review of performance, claims, market development and awareness of senior management,” said Ms Davoust. She also feels that insurers have invested in various digital tools to help improve administration of insurance policies that can help reduce the renewal burden and speed up policy inception. But she stressed that there is still a long way to go to fully streamline such processes. When it comes to the important area of cyber risk Ms Davoust said there is increased awareness among employees, in part on the back of help from insurers and brokers. “There have been improvements in the intercompany education and protection of the employees from basic errors that could make the company more vulnerable to cyber attacks,” she told Commercial Risk Europe. But she believes insurers and brokers could do more to help organisations manage cyber risk and find suitable transfer options. “Insurers and brokers can help risk managers prevent cyber risk by sharing more data around cyber risk, including large incidents and unsuccessful attempts to breach defences,” she said. Adding: “In general, there is interest from insurers to cover cyber risks but the lack of information sharing makes it difficult to find good solutions.” She thinks insurers, brokers and risk managers should take part in political discussions about handling cyber incidents and hopes this will help to avoid the need for governments to create cyber pools because the market has failed to come up with adequate solutions. “I really hope that we will not reach the point where governments will create cyber pools because the cyber insurance market failed to find proper solutions in cooperation with the risk managers directly,” she said.

Rising star

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