Your profession needs you!

Risk and insurance managers do seem to spend a lot of time talking about themselves and their role in the world and casual observers could be forgiven for thinking that this is a very narcissistic community of ‘professionals’.

But this is far from the case because a more humble and indeed often downright shy group of people, one could not hope to meet.

So why do these people who spend most of their time trying to keep their heads below the parapet seem to spend so much time asking why nobody notices or cares about them when they are gathered together in such a group?

The answer to that is quite simple. The recent financial and economic crisis has forced companies of all types to rethink the way they operate and inevitably, given the nature of the crisis, improve the way they manage risk.

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Risk management has finally escaped from the clutches of those high flyers in banking and corporate CEOs and chairmen are cottoning on to the fact that it can be applied in the rest of the world too and hopefully much more effectively.

The problem for the readers of Commercial Risk Europe is that, in most cases, the big cheeses do not appear to realise that they have highly professional and dedicated risk managers already beavering away at corporate risk management within their companies and have done for years.

It seems that the intrinsic link between insurance and risk management has conspired to mask this key role because the big cheeses think that all these corporate risk managers do is buy insurance and little else.

Thus there is a big danger that the risk management revolution that is supposedly underway in corporate Europe and elsewhere will pass by the existing risk management community as the big cheeses look elsewhere—audit, treasury and other higher profile functions—for the answers.

This is not a new problem by any means of course and risk managers have been trying to spread their word for years.

But now it is imperative that the community bands together with renewed gusto and bangs those board member’s heads together until they get the message across: “We are the experts—ask us!”

Otherwise the community will become increasingly isolated and marginalised as another huge opportunity sails by.

In practical terms readers of CRE need to get involved in the debate via their national associations and turn up at key industry events such as the FERMA forum in London at the end of this month and our own Malta International Risk and Insurance Congress November 25 and 26.

Practical and focused discussion of what needs to be done with peers and insurance industry experts in such events will help crystallise the issues and lay the basis for a firm plan of action. Sign up now!

— The CRE Risk Frontiers annual survey of Europe’s leading risk managers, sponsored by XL, will be published at the Malta International Risk & Insurance Congress on November 25 and 26. Attendance is free for risk managers. To sign up click here