Newsletter Sign-up

The total cost of risk management increased only slightly over the past year, but more risk managers are saying the property/casualty market "is hard."

The following scenarios are ripped from the headlines and as a risk manager who is now analyzing risk for a large-scale special event, they have got my full attention.

Risk managers at asset-management firms say they have more involvement in strategic issues following the financial crisis.

Although companies are on track to pay as much as $8 billion this year to resolve charges of defrauding the government, questions remain about the relative lack of charges against executives.

So many wondrous feats are taking place this spring and summer: The Nik Wallenda high-wire walk across Niagara Falls, the UEFA Euro 2012 in Poland/Ukraine and, of course, the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in London.

With the passing of Steve Jobs, the media has been consumed with elevating him to his celestial pedestal as the greatest innovator of all time. For now, I won't quibble with the core premise that he, indeed, leveraged innovation for all it was worth, often taking other people's foundational ideas and making them into items of near-universal appeal.

Last month I left you with some thoughts about how enterprise risk management (ERM) was showing signs of early recognition in the Middle East and North Africa, and particularly in some developing countries where modern business practices are less mature.

I will never forget this story. It deeply inspired me early in my career. As a young natural gas engineer, I was charged with the installation of microturbines. My job then was to produce microturbine specifications, get the turbines manufactured and have them installed. Each turbine had a price tag of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

You are walking toward your car through a poorly lit parking lot late at night. Just one other car is in the lot. You hear a noise behind you. You look back, see nothing and continue at a slightly faster pace. You hear another noise behind you, again no one, but you pick up your pace nonetheless.

You are walking toward your car through a poorly lit parking lot late at night. Just one other car is in the lot. You hear a noise behind you. You look back, see nothing and continue at a slightly faster pace. You hear another noise behind you, again no one, but you pick up your pace nonetheless.

I've noticed an interesting development emerging from the Middle East. There's a growing appetite for understanding more effective management of risk, even an explicit interest in what folks from that region seemingly understand to be enterprise risk management.

Risk managers and C-suite executives differ in how they view the profession, according to a Marsh/RIMS survey.

With election season here, RISK PAC flexes its political muscle as it awaits FIO report on insurance modernization.

As the economy improves, we can only expect the risk manager merry-go-round to heat up as they jump at more opportunities, and the revolving door continues to spin that much faster.

We have all heard the expressions: "You get what you pay for," "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys," and "Nothing in life is free." They all speak to how money drives us.

To a risk management leader, innovation should be a continuing strategic goal. Yet the hurdles to innovation are many.

A more aggressive Labor Department creates implications for employment practices liability coverage.

While the NFL fights against head injuries, the New Orleans Saints had a bounty program in place where players received cash rewards for injuring the opposition.

It appears that 16 is the magic number. All around the world it is the average age where we are perceived to have "a coming of age." It is believed that at 16, we reach a spiritual maturity and are ready to embrace our responsibilities and accountabilities within society.

Just when you thought ERM meant enterprise risk management, I'm here to tell you your focus should be more on extreme risk management; after all, should we really spend our limited and valuable time and resources on the expected when the unexpected is often so much more destructive?