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Multiple Risks to Watch Out For at 2018 World Cup

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Above: Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow 

The 2018 World Cup tournament began on June 14 and lasts until July 15. Thousands of fans will travel to Russia for the event, which consists of 64 matches and 32 teams in 11 cities. Like other mega events, it presents countless challenges for a number of industries including construction, travel, hospitality and security.

Circuit Magazine for security specialists reports that threat for terrorism is high, as there have been attacks in Moscow and the North Caucasus and most recently, a suicide attack on a Metro Train in St. Petersburg. It notes, however, that “Past performance in security terms of Russia at large events has been very strong, the Sochi Olympics was well controlled with no terrorist incidents affecting fans.

Based on our assessment we continue to recommend that any attendance at large events, or corporate travel in Russia is supported by additional risk management measures.”

The article also recommends that attendees remain vigilant in public places, adding that to address this risk, security has been increased at airports and transportation hubs. It warns of street crime, including pickpocketing, that targets tourists. “Bogus police officers have harassed and robbed tourists.

If you are stopped always insist on seeing identification. Avoid openly carrying expensive items, or anything that might easily identify you as a tourist. Avoid walking about late at night alone,” Circuit warned.

Not to be overlooked are health concerns.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (EU/EEA) recommends in a recent report that anyone traveling to Russia for the games make sure their vaccinations are up-to-date, particularly for diphtheria, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, measles, meningococcal infection, mumps, pertussis, poliomyelitis rubella and tetanus. According to the EU/EEA:

“As is often the case with mass gathering events, during the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia visitors may be most at risk of gastrointestinal illness and vaccine-preventable infections. The risk of being affected by gastrointestinal illness can be reduced by employing standard hygiene measures including regular hand washing with soap, drinking safe water (bottled, chlorinated or boiled before consumption); eating thoroughly cooked food and carefully washing fruit and vegetables with safe drinking water before consumption.”

It added that while outbreaks and spread of vaccine-preventable diseases are of particular concern during such mass gatherings. “there are no indications that the risk is higher than usual.”

Beazley notes that many of the 2018 World Cup’s risks impacting various industries will be covered by the London insurance market. The insurer outlines some of the key risks and their likely insured values:

Suicide Discussions in the Workplace

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Conversations about suicide in the workplace have been seemingly unavoidable, due to the self-inflicted deaths of apparel icon Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, chef, author and “Parts Unknown” host, last week. Employers may use these tragedies to reconsider their own prevention and awareness efforts, and ways they can productively contribute to the dialogue and keep their workers safe.

According to the latest Vital Signs report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (which was released in the time between the two aforementioned fatalities), suicide is the tenth-leading cause of death in the United States and is on the rise. The new data also shows that in 2016, nearly 45,000 Americans age 10 and older died by suicide—equaling about 123 people every day.

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The increases were reflected in 49 states (Nevada being the only one with a decrease) and 25 states had rate increases of more than 30% since 1999.

“Suicide is a leading cause of death for Americans—and it’s a tragedy for families and communities across the country,” CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat, M.

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D. said in a statement. “From individuals and communities to employers and healthcare professionals, everyone can play a role in efforts to help save lives and reverse this troubling rise in suicide.”

Suicide is rarely caused by a single factor, the CDC said. Although suicide prevention efforts largely focus on identifying and providing treatment for people with mental health conditions, there are many additional opportunities for prevention.

Dialogue Etiquette
What we say or don’t say, and how we say it, matters to those struggling with thoughts of ending their lives and to those suffering a loss due to suicide. Suggestions for how to address the issue are offered by CNN, which quoted a crisis intervention expert advocating for changing the phrase “committed suicide.”

“It implies sin or crime” –we “commit” sins and crimes – “and pathologizes those affected. We suggest more objective phrasing, like ‘died by/from suicide,’ ‘ended their life’ or ‘took their life,'” said Dese’Rae Stage, a suicide awareness activist. “If we’re using the right language, if we’re pulling negative connotations from the language, talking about suicide may be easier.”

Ultimately, the CDC suggests that there is no single method that best prevents or reduces suicide. “Rather, suicide prevention is best achieved,” it stated in the technical package, “…across all sectors, private and public.”

Although society’s collective attention span is limited, considering the barrage of headlines emanating from media outlets and overall news fatigue, suicide – like drug use – is a public health concern. It is likely that more stories and facts will emerge in the coming weeks about the CDC’s data, as well as the mindsets of Bourdain and Spade, which will bring the topics into a mainstream dialogue again.
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The Business Impact
In 2017, the CDC released Preventing Suicide, a technical package containing strategies and approaches to help employers, government and other sectors of society take a comprehensive public health approach to prevention and address the range of contributing factors.

The package also explores the health and economic consequences of suicides and suicide attempts. For example:

  • In 2013, suicide cost $50.8 billion in estimated lifetime medical and work-loss costs alone.
  • Another study estimated the total lifetime costs associated with nonfatal injuries and deaths caused by self-directed violence to be approximately $93.5 billion in 2013.
  • One estimate suggested that 13.2 million (7%) of the U.S. adult population knew someone 12 months prior to the study who had died by suicide.

The technical package suggests that businesses are among the entities that “are in the best position to establish policies and support practices that create protective environments where people live, work, and play.”

Strategies in a reduction or prevention effort include:

Strengthening access and delivery of suicide care. Two approaches include adding/increasing coverage of mental health conditions in health insurance policies and reducing provider shortages in underserved areas and providing safer care through changes in the systems. The CDC states: “Equal coverage does not necessarily imply good coverage as health insurance plans vary in the extent to which benefits and services are offered to address various health conditions.

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Rather it helps to ensure that mental health services are covered on par with other health concerns.”

Creating protective environments. This involves fostering a culture characterized by awareness and encourages prosocial behavior (such as asking for help) that should start at the executive level. It also calls for reducing access to lethal means (such as chemicals, weapons and other items that may be available or necessary in the workplace) among those who may be at risk of suicide.

Reducing future and unexpected risks. These include suicide contagion—which can be triggered by continuous, sensationalized or uninformed reporting on the subject. Should your workplace be impacted by a suicide, postvention approaches such as debriefing sessions, counseling and other actions to provide a protective environment can help balance workplace morale and “may reduce survivors’ guilt, feelings of depression, and complicated grief.”

It is worth noting that World Suicide Prevention Day will be observed on Sept. 10, which coincides with National Suicide Prevention Week  (Sept. 9-15) in the U.S.

Expect the Unexpected: Mitigating the Risks of Natural Disasters

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As we’ve seen with the recent Kilauea volcanic eruption and last year’s catastrophic hurricane season, natural disasters are becoming more frequent and dramatically more powerful. In fact, NOAA recently reported that weather and climate disasters reached an all-time high in damage costs within the United States, exceeding $300 billion in 2017.

In the face of these increases, companies have a social responsibility to maintain a strong disaster recovery strategy. How can your company prepare to combat the risks from these seemingly unpredictable events? Implementing a proactive risk management approach can help companies better prepare themselves, their employees and their communities to minimize damage and loss in the face of these destructive events. But these strategies cannot simply be created when a natural disaster strikes. As with anything, careful planning before a catastrophe happens is vital to the continued health and success of a business.

When developing these strategies, it is imperative that both pre- and post-disaster planning is  included in the mix, as each plays a critical role in ensuring your ongoing operations.

Maintain a pre-event strategy
It’s important to remember that when natural disaster strikes, there are both direct and indirect costs to a company. How you plan and address these costs can either save or destroy your business.

With today’s technology, we have the ability to monitor most natural disasters and maintain a better idea of when and how hard they will hit. This isn’t always the case, however. While hurricanes can take time to form before making landfall, oftentimes tornadoes and wildfires happen overnight, making it critical to have disaster plans in place before a disaster strikes.

There are three main areas companies should consider when creating a preemptive disaster strategy: 1) supply chain, 2) employees and 3) business infrastructure.

Maintaining a timely and accurate risk strategy for your company and your employees is incredibly important to protect all of these assets. First, it can help protect your supply chain by providing time to divert your supply chain operations from problem areas.

Additionally, it is imperative to be mindful of conditions affecting your various suppliers and how their potential risks can affect your operations.

Armed with this knowledge, you can proactively develop supply chain diversion strategies to maintain efficiency and production. While you may not have the threat of a natural disaster, one of your largest suppliers might. So think ahead, make a back-up plan and monitor both your own operations and those of your supply chain.

As we all know, employees are central to each and every business. An established risk mitigation strategy will include notifying employees so they have time to protect themselves and their family. It can also help management decide if and when to send employees home to help keep them safe.

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Finally, a preemptive strategy needs to consider the effects of disaster on business infrastructure. How will you prepare your building and operations for the threat of a flood or tornado? Do you have access to the proper reinforcements and equipment to accomplish these preparations? A well-established pre-event risk management strategy can help with these issues and also minimize damage so that you are not left picking up the pieces of what could have been a protected building or warehouse.

Implement a proactive post-event strategy
When developing a post-event disaster plan, the best strategy is to think long-term, as short fixes are just that—short fixes.

Consider the upstream impact of the disaster. Damage to raw materials and supplier areas can amount to huge indirect costs. So how can you avoid this? One way is by ensuring your pre-event plan is efficiently put into effect and is able to redirect any necessary supplies. It is also imperative to have a successful remediation strategy in place to recover from the effects of a disaster for both your operations and those of your supply chain. Be prepared to re-establish your supply chain and be sure it is completely intact post-disaster.

Many disasters also have long-lasting impacts that cause companies to have a lengthy rebuilding process. Have a plan for secondary supply chain options to ensure ongoing operations in case a supplier is out of service for a longer period of time. The problems don’t end when the disaster ends, so be sure to build out contingency plans for your operations through the potential recovery months.

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Your post-event remediation strategies must also consider your physical office environment. Ensure there is a plan to check that equipment is operational and know how to repair or find replacement equipment to get operations up and running as soon as possible. Focus on rebuilding the business ecosystem from supply chain, to operations, to your employees.

Finally, consider how you will get your employees back to work, and not just for the immediate future. Invest in your employees, and they will invest in you. After natural disasters, your employees could be facing damaged or destroyed homes, the loss of loved ones and even personal injuries.

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Look at what the company can do to help ensure their well-being so that they are willing and able to return to work.

Inevitability doesn’t have to mean susceptibility
Regardless of location, natural disasters are going to occur that affect you and your business to some extent. That is a fact of life. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that your company is susceptible to the significant damages and costs associated with these disasters.

Maintaining open lines of communication with your leadership and employees will help you develop and implement a strategic plan before and after nature takes its course. As we face the upcoming hurricane season and other inevitable disasters, it is better to mitigate the risks and susceptibility so that your “in case” plan doesn’t become “we should have.”

Compliance in 2018: Q&A with James Reese of the SEC

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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently named James Reese as the Chief Risk and Strategy Officer for the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE), which also leads the Office of Risk and Strategy (ORS). These offices assess companies’ and products’ risk to the financial markets and influence the SEC’s rule-making initiatives, among other actions. OCIE conducts the SEC’s National Exam Program (NEP), which was created to protect investors, ensure market integrity and support responsible capital formation through risk-focused strategies that:

  • improve compliance
  • prevent fraud
  • monitor risk
  • inform policy

Risk Management Monitor reached out to Reese to find out what he has in store for his office and U.S. businesses.

Risk Management Monitor: Your office administers the NEP to businesses to ensure they are operating in compliance with the law and the SEC rules. Can you describe the information you gather and how it is used?

James Reese: During examinations, we may request and review policies and procedures, supervisory processes, trading activity or any other aspect of a registrant’s business. The results of the NEP’s examinations are used by the SEC to inform rule-making initiatives, identify and monitor risks, improve industry practices and pursue misconduct. The NEP maintains a critical presence among market participants by conducting thousands of exams annually. This provides us with timely, accurate, and reliable information to assist the program and SEC in fulfilling its mission.

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RMM: You had been OCIE’s acting chief since shortly after its inception. How has the office grown and what is your vision for the next five to 10 years?

JR: Now that we have built synergies across groups, the focus is turning more toward enhancing our risk assessments, providing better support to exam teams, improving our technology and using big data.

Centralizing the staff has led to a more cohesive approach to risk assessment and more opportunities to collaborate and take advantage of cross-discipline problem-solving.

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It has also helped us prioritize those areas where we can make the greatest impact on the NEP, allowing not only our office to maximize its limited resources but in turn also allowing us to focus on how we can provide exam teams tools and data to maximize their resources.

Ultimately, our office’s goals are wide-ranging and include:

  • identifying risks to investors, particularly retail investors, and the markets
  • assisting the home and regional offices in identifying exam candidates
  • developing technology tools and quantitative approaches that exams teams can use to, for example, identify potentially problematic practices at firms and more quickly analyze trading activity
  • monitoring and examining some of the largest financial firms to understand the various market and their operational risks

RMM: What risks are you closely monitoring (or are most influential)?

JR: Since 2013, OCIE has annually published its examination priorities, which generally reflect certain practices, products and services that OCIE believes may present a heightened risk to investors and/or the integrity of the financial markets. In 2018, as in prior years, we have prioritized matters of importance to retail investors, including seniors and those saving for retirement. This translates to pursuing examinations of firms that provide products and services directly to retail investors and focusing on the disclosure and sales practices associated with higher risk products.

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We are also focusing on risks to market infrastructure, cybersecurity as well as firms’ anti-money laundering requirements.

RMM: How has a risk manager’s role (and/or its importance) changed since you began at the SEC in 1999?

JR: I have seen more firms identify individuals to either serve as a chief risk officer or build out their risk management function. As SEC Chairman Jay Clayton noted in his recent remarks at the Equity Market Structure Symposium: “One of the few certainties of trading markets is that they continually evolve. New technologies spur new market mechanisms, which, in turn, lead to new trading practices.”

Risk managers face an increasingly difficult task of identifying and triaging these changes, and also having to be proactive. Trying to look around corners, identify emerging issues and spot trends before they metastasize within an organization is the cornerstone of any good risk organization and ORS spends a great deal of time on those activities, as well.