Anra launches risk manager of the year awards as focus turns to ERM

The Italian risk and insurance management association Anra will today announce the launch of its first Risk Manager of the Year Awards during the association’s annual general meeting in Milan.

Anra has been exceptionally active in recent times, embracing Ferma’s Rimap risk management accreditation and running a high volume of specialist webinars for members.

The association now has 800 members and is the fourth-largest risk and insurance management association in Europe.

Carlo Cosimi, president of Anra, board member of the International Federation of Insurance and Risk Management Associations (Ifrima) and head of group risk and insurance at multinational engineering and technology group MAIRE Spa, told Commercial risk that the time is right to launch the national awards.

The awards will be announced over a gala dinner in Milan in December and Cosimi expects a healthy level of entrants. He also expects the winner of the Italian awards to put themselves forwards for the European Risk Manager of the Year Awards that are held by Ferma and Commercial Risk each year.

Cosimi recently left his former job as head of corporate insurance and risk financing at Italian multinational oilfield services company Saipem to join MAIRE. He said the main reason for the switch was broadening his role beyond insurance management and into wider enterprise risk management.

“The assignment includes a complete vision and action on the dimension of risk and opportunity at the group level, with an integrated management of ERM, project risk management and the risk transfer processes,” he explained.

A relatively low proportion of Anra members hold a broader risk management role beyond insurance, with most reporting to the chief finance officer. But Anra is working hard to raise the profile of risk and insurance management within the wider Italian business community and educate its members in the wider discipline.

Following its AGM, the association will host its second-biggest event of the year, after the annual congress in November, on the topic of enterprise risk management.

Gabriella Fraire, insurance manager at multinational cable group Prysmian Group and vice president at Anra, said the association’s members are keen to learn about the topic and 150 people are expected to attend the in-person only event.

Her boss and former Anra president Alessandro de Felice is now chief risk officer of Prysmian and is another example of how individual careers, and the profession as a whole, is fast evolving.

“Enterprise risk management requires constant evolution as a natural response to changes in society and the economy, with a view to understanding and mitigating risks and opportunities with potential short and long-term impacts on company management. The need to be dynamic characterises the figure of the risk manager, a role that requires interdisciplinary skills and constant updating of the analytical skills to face scenarios of growing uncertainty in which new types of risk emerge,” explained Anra in the build-up to its event.

“Among the topics that have recently attracted the most attention are Artificial Intelligence and digitisation, due to the rapid development in recent years and the multiplicity of applications destined to grow with strong acceleration in the near future. All this generates the need to raise the level of protection of corporate and business IT infrastructures of companies of all sizes, in order to avoid potential business interruptions,” added the association.