Man with a mission-Comment

To be honest, I rather expected it would be Jorge that was handed the task of filling Peter den Dekker’s figuratively (but not physically) large shoes because it would take a character as large as his to fill that particular void. Peter has done a great job at Ferma over the last couple of years, if nothing else by immensely helping us at CRE to fill our pages with copy as he dashed about Europe tackling all the big topics of the day. Jorge therefore has a lot on his plate to keep up the momentum. Though, in the shape of Vice Presidents Michel Dennery and Julia Graham plus all the national association leaders and the full time executive at Ferma he does have a good team and they will be a big help.hideIt is important for Ferma to have a big personality at the helm who is used to travelling all over the place and making an impact on behalf of the risk and insurance managers on the ground and Jorge has all the qualities required to do the job. In his interview with CRE’s Rodrigo Amaral, our tireless Brazilian correspondent who covers Spain, Portugal and France for us, Jorge listed his main targets and they are big ones. Our just published annual Risk Frontiers survey of a group of 70 leading European risk managers and our recently published Risk Distribution survey of 25 of Europe’s leading brokers both made it abundantly clear that corporate risk management matters more today than ever before. The credit crisis and global economic downturn kicked off a crisis in confidence among corporate, political and social leaders the world over as the days of never-ending profit and growth came abruptly to a halt. The mud was slung left, right and centre as everyone tried to blame each other for things while the more sensible types attempted to identify the causes of the crisis and work out some solutions. The bottom line of course was that virtually everyone, at a corporate and personal level, allowed themselves to be sucked into a risk-based dream-world in which most risks could be effectively ‘managed’ through constant revenue growth and the worst could be transferred to the capital markets via fancy new instruments that ‘atomised’ the risk such as credit derivatives. When the market blew up people realised that actually what they had been doing was failing to properly identify, measure, manage and transfer that risk and realised it was time to get back to basics. This meant that the CROs and even risk and insurance managers suddenly found that they were in demand and everyone wanted to know what this ERM thing was all about. The economic and financial uncertainties of course continue to hamper access to credit, reduce profit expectations and create plenty of other risks, particularly of the supply chain type as a result of cost-cuts, and these need to be managed. On top of that we are now seeing the physical manifestation of all the blame and mud-slinging as it arrives in the form of a steady flow of new rules and regulations on wider matters such as compliance and corporate governance and more directly financial rules such as Solvency II that are attempts to impose a risk management culture where it allegedly does not exist already. The insurance industry does not really agree with the latter of course. So, as Mr Luzzi takes the reins at Ferma, European risk and insurance managers are staring at a big opportunity to keep on expanding the gospel of enterprise risk management and raise the profile of the ‘profession’ as never before. “Risk management is not only about preventing losses, but also taking advantage of opportunities,” as Mr Luzzi said in the interview. To grasp this opportunity risk and insurance managers need to raise their game and take personal and professional risks. The problem with sticking your head above the parapet is that it can get blown off on occasion and naturally cautious risk managers are well aware of this. But this is all about internal management and making sure that others within the group buy into the whole ERM idea. Risk managers must, critically, learn how to effectively delegate responsibility for its implementation and evolution throughout the organisation. And, if nothing else, if there is a whole bunch of you sticking your heads above the parapet at the same time you are of course less likely to get your head blown off than if you tried it alone. This is one of the reasons why education is so important as well as standards and raising the level of respect for the ‘profession’ amongst other parts of business. Ferma’s recently raised profile overseas, notably in South America over the Brazilian insurance law, can only help in this regard and of course Mr Luzzi is the right man for the job as he knows that region intimately and has a continued role at ALARYS and IFRIMA. It would also be good, however, to see Ferma engage more positively with RIMS in the US. As an individual who was once forcibly and very rudely ejected from the annual RIMS conference because I had not registered properly and tried to put some newspapers on a table that had not been properly allocated to me, I am more than aware of how isolationist the US risk management community can be. So it is not an easy task. But perhaps the Latin American activity could spark a greater level of cooperation over the Atlantic and also other active risk management associations such as the South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders could be co-opted into a more international approach too. These associations could be supported to raise the profile of the profession in the emerging markets of Africa and Asia. This could only help achieve the fundamental goals of the community that Mr Luzzi has courageously agreed to pursue. But while Mr Luzzi and his colleagues grapple with these tricky professional matters they must not forget, as he himself states in the interview, that insurance still matters. It may be regarded as somewhat grubby by some CROs and in other parts of the organisation. But insurance is an important element of the risk management armoury and has a lot to offer. There is a fear, as revealed in our Risk Frontiers survey, that the continually rising complexity of global business will inevitably make insurance less relevant as insurers struggle to keep pace, held back by their innate conservatism. But risk and insurance managers have an important role to play and must try to help their risk transfer partners see the light that can be shed by innovation. It can and does happen in this industry but perhaps it just needs a little more partnership, trust and thinking outside of the box to hurry it up a little. So not much to do then Jorge and we at CRE look forward to travelling down this path with you and recording the successes of you and your colleagues over the next two years.

Man with a mission-Comment

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