Monthly Archives: April 2019

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Solving the Talent Crisis in the Risk Profession

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BOSTON—In a time when skills become obsolete much quicker than in previous eras and the professional landscape is rapidly evolving, businesses need to be more agile and adaptive. Companies with these characteristics tend to meet their clients’ expectations more effectively, have higher employee engagement, and see more success generally. They can accomplish this by bringing on and nurturing younger or newer talent.

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While more schools are offering risk-related academic programs, however, the industry is still not attracting enough young people to its ranks.

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How can companies attract new talent to the risk management industry and keep them from leaving?

“I hear people saying all the time, ‘I wish next-generation people would stay,’” said Monica Merrifield, vice president of risk intelligence at YMCA of Greater Toronto. At today’s RIMS 2019 session “Solving the Talent Crisis in the Risk Profession,” Merrifield and fellow panelists Joseph Milan, principal at JA Milan and Associates LLC, Grace Crickette, vice president of administrative affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and Andrew Bent, risk director at Sage Group plc., discussed why young people aren’t joining the risk management field, and what companies can do to bring them into the industry and keep them there.

Crickette described the next generation as purpose-driven and passionate, expecting a company to have a bigger vision and to be clear about the employee’s role in that vision. They work best in high-collaboration and low-hierarchy environments, and expect a variety of work, as well as meaningful interactions with leadership. They are interested in creating a pathway to growth more than advancement—not necessarily a ladder, Crickette said, but “a lattice.” In part, companies and hiring managers can attract these young professionals by examining their own operations and internal culture to ensure that they address these concerns and are open to new perspectives and contributions. When companies emphasize the values of diversity (both of ideas and people), humility, and learning from mistakes, this will make them more appealing for the next generation of talent, Merrifield said.

Merrifield and Crickette also stressed the importance of cultivating new talent, and how young professionals can grow by seeking out mentors and sponsors who will create opportunities for them, even if those opportunities are not at their current company.

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“Don’t wait for a sponsor, ask for a sponsor,” Crickette said. Multiple panelists also encouraged young professionals to pursue education and accreditation for advancement and growth in a risk management career, Crickette urging young people to take more tests and get professional designations to set themselves apart and learn more, and Milan describing the benefits of the RIMS-CRMP certification. Milan also advised young professionals to be courageous enough to share new ideas in their workplaces, and Merrifield said that they should focus on soft skills, which are less likely to be automated in the future.

When people lament that they wish millennials would stay, Bent said he responds by pointing to studies showing that millennials are actually more loyal when their employers present them with a “why”—a deeper purpose for their work and a reason to stay. He said that companies should examine what they are actually doing to attract and retain younger talent, keeping in mind that millennials and younger generations are better at moving on when they see that a new opportunity elsewhere is better.

Crickette added that the industry needs to show young people that there is more to the risk management business than just insurance, and explain how diverse the field is. Bent and Milan both also said that the risk profession is mostly associated with bad things happening, and that risk management professionals could help change that perception by showing how risk management can create opportunities, showing up in their communities during both good times and bad.

It is possible to get young people to join and stay in the risk management profession, these experts stressed, but companies must do the work to adapt to the employees they want, creating opportunities for young risk management professionals to engage and grow.

Saint Joseph’s University Wins Spencer-RIMS Risk Management Challenge

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BOSTON—Students from Saint Joseph’s University won the Spencer-RIMS Risk Management Challenge at RIMS 2019. Comprising team members Joseph Angelina, Katherine Branson, Ashley Myers, Daniel Tan, and academic advisor Michael Angelina, the winners earned $4,000 for the risk management program they developed and presented at the conference here in Boston this week. Second and third place went to St.

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Mary’s University and Butler University, which won ,000 and ,000, respectively.

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The case study for this year’s challenge came from Robert Zhang, RIMS board director and the risk and compliance director for IKEA China. Zhang tasked the students with identifying the top five risks of integrating new physical and digital commerce options for customers.

In determining a winner, the fine print proved critical, with the best presentations specifically focusing on the core part of the prompt: given digital transformation and shifting consumer preferences, what are the key risks involved as such a massive company innovates and evolves?

The winning team took a useful, strategic approach to risk management that could be flexible for the company to adapt and use going forward.

“They provided a true strategic view of IKEA’s risks as they transition from traditional brick-and-mortar into a multi-channel retailer, and they provided IKEA with a strategic framework that can be built out with tactical options,” said Andrew Bent, risk director at Sage and one of the challenge judges.

This year’s Spencer-RIMS Risk Management Challenge drew more entries than ever before, with teams from 28 schools initially submitting papers on the case study. And the competition was strong—according to Louis Drapeau, who served as a judge, they could not pick a top eight submissions, as anticipated, so they invited nine teams for the in-person presentation rounds here in Boston.

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Poise and pertinent PowerPoint slides reflected the strong presentation skills of the top three teams, Drapeau noted. RIMS CEO Mary Roth had a similar impression, praising all of this year’s participants as impressive aspiring additions to the risk management community. “Beyond the remarkable presentations delivered by each university team, our Spencer-RIMS Risk Challenge students continue to demonstrate the highest-degree of professionalism and an exceptional grasp of sophisticated concepts,” she said.

Understanding Insurance Coverage for Traveling Employees

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BOSTON—The odds of dying in a terrorist attack: 1 in 9.3 million. The odds of getting sick while traveling: 1 in 2. But both should concern companies sending their employees around the world for business, panelists Kathleen Ellis of CNA International, Erin Wilk of Facebook and Andrew Miller of International SOS said at a RIMS 2019 panel titled “Is Insurance Enough When Employees Travel?”

The answer to this question, the panel agreed, was emphatically “no.” But, as Ellis and Wilk noted, insurance coverage is an important part of the equation for many of the biggest things that do go wrong. Even though the risk of catastrophic incident is minor compared to seemingly mundane travel concerns like weather and petty theft, companies should still prepare for the worst in advance.

This is true whether employees are going to common destinations within the United States traditionally thought of as safe or to less familiar places.

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It is also true, Wilk said, whether the employee is an experienced traveler (who can be over-confident) or a novice (who can over-prepare and miss warning signs around them).

The panelists repeatedly stressed that companies should approach travel risk with protecting employees as their priority. Not only do companies have a “duty of care” (a legal responsibility to mitigate the risks traveling employees face), but they also need to be cognizant of the “standard of care” and “duty of loyalty.” Standard of care is the industry standard for employees’ travel risk protection, and companies’ obligation to meet that standard.

Duty of loyalty is the employees’ responsibility to abide by the safety measures the company has put in place. As recently discussed in Risk Management, this is largely on the employee, but the panel noted that employers also have a critical role to play in creating a culture that enables and encourages their people to take the necessary steps to protect themselves while traveling. As Wilk said, “Policy is a piece of paper. Employee practice is what actually matters.”

When it comes to insurance, companies should make sure they are covered, but not over-covered. For example, Miller discussed cases in which companies’ benefits, HR and legal department have all purchased travel coverage without communicating their purchases to the other departments. Businesses may also be unfamiliar with the coverage they have and pay to remediate travel problems themselves when their insurance policies would actually cover those issues.

Key insurance options include:

  • Foreign voluntary workers compensation, which covers workers traveling on business in a way similar to traditional workers’ comp, paying for disease, or repatriation or evacuation
  • Business travel accidental death and dismemberment coverage, which works like life insurance and covers both work-related and non-work-related incidents, and is an option for covering employees’ spouses and dependents
  • Kidnap and ransom coverage, which provides pre-trip support, crisis management services during an incident, and reimburses for ransoms paid for kidnapping extortion, wrongful detention and hijacking
  • Expatriate medical, which is an option for employees who are traveling long-term, and
  • Defense base act coverage, which handles government contractors overseas at embassies and military bases

The panelists also emphasized that travel risk not only endangers employees’ well-being, but also the company’s bottom line. If an employee gets sick while traveling for business, for example, the company’s investment in the trip can be wasted. Additionally, traveling employees who feel unsafe or unprepared for the risks they are facing feel less loyal to their company, and can also be distracted, potentially derailing the important business they are traveling to conduct. The panel urged that pre-trip training and a thorough understanding of the company’s existing coverage are the best ways to mitigate these risks and help employees succeed when traveling for work.

Q&A: 2019 Risk Manager of the Year Luke Figora

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Luke Figora, senior associate vice president and chief risk and compliance officer at Northwestern University, was named the RIMS 2019 Risk Manager of the Year today.

With annual revenues of approximately .

5 billion (reported in 2018) and nearly $700 million in sponsored research annually, Northwestern is among the country’s leading research universities. Figora has risen quickly through the ranks at Northwestern, where his enterprise risk management (ERM) framework has elevated its risk culture across three campuses—two in Illinois and one in Qatar.

Figora spoke with Risk Management Monitor about his experience as one of the youngest stakeholders among Northwestern’s leadership, his process of customizing an ERM matrix and his reaction to the recent college admissions scandal.

Risk Management Monitor: You and your department created an ERM matrix in the past year that united Northwestern’s compliance owners and that may even set a precedent in higher education. What went into its creation?

Luke Figora: We spent a lot of time defining risk appetite statements and tried to make our program a little more outcome-based and actually show how we’re moving the needle on uncertain key risks for Northwestern. And we avoided spending too much time aligning perfectly to one of the ERM frameworks like COSO or ISO. So I think if someone looked at our program from the outside, it might not check all the boxes from a typical model perspective, but it’s driving action here at Northwestern and it seems to be the right level for engagement with our stakeholders.

I think one of the biggest challenges for ERM at Northwestern—and maybe this is true across the industry—is that we don’t necessarily have one strategy right now. We have some pillars and values that Northwestern follows, but we’re ultimately a very decentralized institution that has a number of schools, and a number of units in each one of those have slightly different objectives and goals.

RMM: It seems that there is a degree of transparency, but not full transparency.

LF: Right. For example, athletics and the School of Medicine have very different risk profiles and neither one of them should know the other’s risks or operations. And it would be hard for someone in athletics to speak about the risks of animal research within the School of Medicine. I think that’s where our risk office plays a role in right-sizing the expectations and taking the feedback from all the units, but trying to do some triage through that.

RMM: Many of your colleagues are several years your senior—how has that impacted your work?

LF: I am probably the youngest person on the leadership team across the institution, but it has probably been beneficial. I have tried to bring different ideas and update the ways in which we think about risk. I’m not jaded by the insurance industry, and I think people are receptive because of that.

RMM: Since arriving at Northwestern nearly five years ago, you moved up the ranks relatively quickly, although you’ve maintained that was not your goal. How would you advise young risk professionals as they get their feet wet?  

LF: I think all of us at early stages in our careers can’t wait to be a manager and want that vertical growth and the chance to lead a team, but the bigger driving factor for me has been horizontal growth and expanding the portfolio. After that, I believe the other opportunities will come. That is a belief I try to hammer home in my work and when I make industry presentations.

RMM: The college admissions system is a hot topic due to the major scandal that broke in March. How might that have affected where the admissions process is on Northwestern’s risk register?

LF: Last year at this time, fraud in the admissions cycle wouldn’t have been one of our top 10 enterprise risks. But when things like this break, there is a tendency to go into reaction mode and examine whether we have similar issues. I always try to keep people level-headed and remind them that just because this hit doesn’t mean it moves to number one on our crisis management list for the year. It is worth doing a deep dive into the question or topic that’s in the news, but whenever scandals hit, I think we’ve tried to approach them with a rational view.

RMM: It sounds like the knee-jerk reaction is to go into crisis communication mode, even though it’s not your crisis.

LF: We know we’re going to get questions from our trustees, so there’s an initial all-hands-on-deck mentality. You have to make sure you have talking points that outline how we’ve thought about it because we know we’re going to get questions from the media. We do focus on crisis communications, but it becomes more about knowing if we have the right controls that could protect the institution from something like this happening to us.  

Figora was also the special guest on this week’s RIMScast, which you can download here.