Parima targets career progression for risk managers in 2018

The Pan-Asia Risk and Insurance Management Association (Parima) is prioritising the career progression of its members in 2018, according to executive director Stacey Huang.

“We have four areas we want to concentrate on in 2018 – a career portal, a mentoring programme, a certification supplement programme, and our conferences for next year,” Ms Huang told Commercial Risk Asia.

Parima has just held the largest of its three conferences this year, in Singapore, which featured a number of presentations and discussions about the risk profession and building a risk culture within an organisation, as well as a focus on risk data and technology

“Our 2017 theme is ‘Resilience, Sustainability and Building an Intelligent Future’ and these have been covered in our conferences in Manila, Shanghai and Singapore. Manila was more about sustainability, with a focus on talent risk (millennials); China was about resilience, especially around the expansion and growth related to the One Belt One Road initiative; and Singapore had a digital and tech agenda, building on the intelligent future theme,” explained Ms Huang.

In addition to the conference, Parima also held a series of masterclasses held by insurers, including one held by Axa on the risk management uses of data and inviting risk managers to act as data scientists, in keeping with Parima’s digital theme.

Ms Huang also revealed the destinations for next year’s two conferences – Bangkok and Japan – as the association attempts to spread its membership base.
Parima has focused on co-creating research guides and whitepapers this year, in an effort to create more APAC-driven research work. Most of the whitepapers we see today are done outside Asia and use case studies that may or may not apply to the majority in the region.

“As the region with the largest risks, we have plenty of best practices and lessons learnt to share,” said Ms Huang.

This includes its partnership with MMC APAC Risk Centre, which has yielded a research paper on Next Generation Risk Management, examining how risk management as a practice needs to keep up with the digital times.

In terms of certification, Parima has agreed with other international risk management associations – Ferma, Rims, Alarys and Irmsa – to work towards mutual recognition of their respective risk management certification or designation programmes. The work will begin by seeking to ensure risk managers can secure continuous professional development points for attending each of the association’s events.

“This is important because the risk profession requires more collaboration and less competition, said Ms Huang. “Working alongside other associations to ensure we collectively push for higher standards and quality in the risk field on a global scale, gives risk managers a strong signal that their career can be taken to the professional level.

“At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves: what is good for risk managers? If attending more events overseas and locally is good so that they can continually sharpen their knowledge, then let’s make sure they are rewarded for doing so by mutually acknowledging points for each others’ events,” added Ms Huang.