Risk Frontiers – Portugal

Please click on the links below to access the articles. Weak economy and catastrophe concerns Social changes and cyber threats create new risks for Portuguese firms Flow of information is key to concerns over claims services No hard market in sight Commercial Risk Europe would like to formally thank all of the individuals who took time to contribute towards our Risk Frontiers survey project.hideThis is often because of differences between local and centralised risk management standards, added Charlotte Barnekow, Head of Insurance and Risk Management at Ericsson. Addressing this issue is challenging, she said. “We have our risk management standards for things such as physical risks that are usually based on well known international standards that are adapted to what kind of company you are. When I go out and benchmark the actual conditions in a factory or warehouse or supplier it might not match. What I can hear back from the local side is that our approach or standard is not in accordance with their national standards. The national standards are often focused on personal security to save lives and to save our asset is of less interest, as they should be. I can understand that as previously this was the majority of the national standards concern,” she explained. In order to overcome this problem risk managers at multinational companies need to be able to educate their partners and communicate their wishes more effectively, advised Ms Barnekow. “You have to have open eyes and be a good listener in order to be able to put your message across… you need to be able to communicate to explain our standard is not only about saving lives but we also have a big business here and we are also looking to safeguard our property or future income,” she said. “This is what risk management is turning into—you have to be very communicative. In a way it is turning more into a management role than a risk role. It is not just about security and compliance, it is about reasoning based on common sense,” she said. Mr Finnman believes that insurers and brokers have a role to play in helping to develop worldwide risk standards through incentive tools. But he stressed companies themselves must be proactive. His company holds workshops and seminars for operational managers in China to educate on loss prevention. These are run in a joint effort with insurers. “We now have a workshop or seminar for the operational managers in China to educate them on loss prevention on the property side. It is a joint effort with the insurance company, but we also have an interest to safeguard our business and start this process of building risk awareness,” he said. A year ago ASSA ABLOY initiated a premium incentive programme to encourage better risk management and loss prevention at subsidiaries, predominantly in China. Each site is rated on risk management and loss prevention standards and is then charged either a 50% premium increase or decrease depending into which category they fall into. “In the beginning when the risk awareness is low this is more or less the only way to achieve some sort of progress, because when we launched this programme people that had never cared about loss prevention all of a sudden sat up and started to listen,” said Mr Finnman. In order to protect the parent company from weaknesses in foreign-owned assets, Mr Edström said his company excludes certain units from its captives. “We are not bringing those new units into the captives before we have good loss prevention in place. So we keep it [the risk] outside, in the external market, probably at a higher premium, and then when they are protected we will bring them in,” he explained.

Risk Frontiers – Portugal

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