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The Risky ‘Business of Art’ Explored at Observer Event

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From left: Massimo Sterpi, Elena Zavelev, Anne Bracegirdle, Devin Finzer, Curt Bilby / Photo: Keith Sherman & Associates

NEW YORK—On May 21, the Observer’s inaugural “Business of Art Observed” event brought experts in art, insurance, risk management, tech and finance to the Roosevelt Hotel to discuss established and emerging risks facing the $50 billion art industry.

The “Insurance and Risk Management” session wasted no time exploring creative risk and claims management approaches to the various forms of potential damage to artwork. From transit to security to geopolitical risk, panelists agreed fine art coverage is not a paint-by-numbers process, and said the “framing of a claim” can facilitate a payment.

“Insurance companies get a bad reputation,” said Mary Pontillo, senior vice president and national fine art practice leader at DeWitt Stern. “But the higher-end, really good-quality insurance companies are looking for ways to pay claims. I think that’s where there are a lot of misconceptions.”

For example, she mentioned advising a client whose work was being kept on a yacht. While certain maritime and environmental risks such as humidity were not covered by the policy, she was able to demonstrate that ocean spray had been the source of the damage and successfully get the claim covered.

The session discussed modernizing risk management in the art market and how the industry should apply forensic due diligence to transactions and ensure they view all business activities through a lens of strategic risk. And with transparency cited as a continuous challenge, Dennis Wade, a senior partner at Wade Clark Mulcahy, LLP, who has handled international fine art matters, pointed out the importance of reputation risk when drafting a policy.

“Many policies also contain an exclusion for the dishonesty of the person to whom you deliver or entrust the goods,” Wade said. “So if you consign a work to a corrupt gallerist, there may be an exclusion in your policy and you may not be covered at all.”

The emergence of blockchain technology dominated discussion at another session, “Art Market 2.0: Using Art & Technology to Drive the Industry Forward.” According to panelists, authentication and secure transactions have risen to the top of their risk registers. New Art Academy Founder Elena Zavelev said blockchain’s ability to put individual faces on digital artwork has mostly solved the prior risk of unauthorized duplications, forgeries, and fraud. Zavelev and her co-panelists said blockchain may facilitate a long-term change in the way art is created, sold, curated and insured by improving the ability to track a work’s provenance.

Christie’s AVP Anne Bracegirdle said the masterstroke for streamlining the authentication process is to create a digital, industry-wide registry. Tokenizing original works, she said, would simplify the experience of buying, selling and trading. “If each piece had its own digital identity that would stay the same, no matter where it went, it would instantly provide secure provenance and prices,” Bracegirdle said. “There are companies like Consensus and Microsoft working to create distributed identity networks. The security within that could be applied to scale blockchain—regardless of which blockchain you’re interacting with. Digital identities would provide clients with access to all their consignments and their purchases in one consolidated space, which currently doesn’t exist.”

The evolution of art was also a hot topic during this session since what’s considered a “finished piece” is no longer just a physical canvas. Digital, virtual and even crypto-art may be in their relative infancy but these are gaining global popularity and could significantly influence the industry, said Devin Finzer, co-founder and CEO of OpenSea, a peer-to-peer marketplace for crypto collectibles, gaming items, and digital art.   

“[Owning digital products] has always been confined to a specific ecosystem, like event tickets to a ticketing site,” Finzer said. “Blockchain offers a new type of ownership for these digital assets and it’s exciting for digital art because you can own it in a variety of [digital forms]. Right now, we see the enthusiasm is from tech enthusiasts, but I think over time these ideas around digital ownership will cross over to a mainstream crowd who appreciate the art more than the technology.”

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.

67% of Hotel Websites Expose Guest Data, Study Finds

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According to new research from cybersecurity company Symantec, 67% of hotel websites are leaking customer reservation details and other personal information. Candid Wueest, the company’s principal threat researcher, tested more than 1,500 hotels in 54 countries, including low-cost to high-cost hotels, as well as both chain and independent hotels.

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symantec hotel data exposureWhen a customer uses a hotel’s website to book a room, the site usually creates and sends them a link so that the customer can directly access  and manage their reservation.

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According to Symantec, part of the problem is that third-party advertisers on hotels’ booking websites and web analytics companies (which track web traffic) can access customers’ bookings because they also get those links. This means that advertisers and analytic companies – including any potential malicious actors among their employees – could access and steal the information that the customer entered when booking a room, and even change or cancel the reservation.

Symantec also found that more than a quarter of the hotel websites examined do not send secure, encrypted links in their confirmation emails. Encrypted links prevent anyone trying to hijack a customer’s data from being able to see that data. If a customer received a confirmation email while using an unprotected WiFi (a public network in a café or an airport, for example), a cybercriminal could intercept that customer’s emails and use the unencrypted hotel booking link to access the customer’s booking. Some of these automatically generated links also contain details like customers’ email addresses in the web address, which makes accessing their information even easier for cybercriminals.

Additionally, many hotel websites are vulnerable to a type of cyberattack called “brute forcing,” where an attacker can use the customer’s email address and guess their booking number to gain access to the reservation and personal information. In some cases, Symantec found that hotel websites did not even require an email address to access customers’ reservation information via brute forcing. Though this method would not be useful to gain access to large amounts of customer data, attackers could use it to target individuals, like a specific CEO or conference attendee.

Wueest noted that hotels have thus far been slow to respond to these data exposure risks, and some have not responded at all. When he alerted the hotels’ data privacy officers to the problems in their sites, 75% responded, and those who did took an average of 10 days. Hotels and their information security staff should promptly assess their booking processes to ensure they are minimizing the risk of potential data leaks and breaches.

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By leaving these gaps in their websites’ security, they are endangering their customers and opening themselves up to risk, including potential liabilities and reputational damage.

Symantec recommends that hotels use encrypted links, and ensure that the automatic links generated do not include information like customers’ email addresses. It also recommends that customers use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs, services that protects users’ internet traffic) when booking or accessing their reservations using public WiFi to prevent any cyberattacker from intercepting any information that would provide a way in.

The report should also serve as a reminder that corporate employees’ personal devices and personal information are popular targets for cybercriminals and can be especially vulnerable to risks while traveling. Any time an employee exposes their devices to unprotected networks or, in this case, insufficiently protected websites, it leaves both the employee and their employer at risk. Even if an employee is using their own device to conduct business, it still endangers their employer because it may expose valuable business information. Cybercriminals have particularly used the hospitality industry as a hunting ground for such attacks, for example, targeting individuals using hotel WiFi, tricking them into downloading malicious software and stealing their information or spying on their internet activity.

How a Strong(er) SRM Program Could Have Helped Boeing

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A strategic risk management (SRM) program is designed to assist organizations in identifying, prioritizing, and planning for the strategic risks that could impair or destroy businesses and reduces the chances of these kinds of crises. And while hindsight is 20-20, an SRM program – or a more effective one – could have helped Boeing avoid some of its recent high-profile crises.

Between October 2018 and March 2019, two crashes involving the Boeing 300 737 MAX 8 models resulted in the loss of 346 lives. Since then, Boeing has:

  • had a possible criminal investigation commenced against it,
  • lost $22 billion in market value in the week following the Ethiopian Airlines’ crash in October,
  • had more than 300 737 MAX 8s grounded worldwide,
  • sustained significant reputational harm,
  • received demands from airlines seeking compensation for lost revenue,
  • been sued by crash victims’ families, and
  • had sales orders cancelled or suspended.

This is a crisis from which it may be difficult to recover.

One could trace back some of the risks to its decades-long rivalry with Airbus and an effort to remain viable.

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When American Airlines indicated it was close to finalizing an exclusive deal with Airbus for hundreds of new jets, Boeing sprung to action. The New York Times reported that Boeing employees then had to move at “roughly double the normal pace” to avoid losing “billions in lost sales and potentially thousands of jobs.”

An SRM program would have required an assessment of the business model and the associated risks, including competitors, long before the call from the CEO of American Airlines. The risks would have been prioritized and this information would have been factored into strategic plans that would have included responses to material risks.

During the scramble, Boeing mirrored Airbus’ operations and mounted larger engines in existing models.

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 The objective seemed straightforward: Make minimum changes to avoid the need for training in a simulator, decrease costs, and build the redesigned model quickly. But a risk was that mounting larger engines changed the aerodynamics in the aircraft, requiring a consequential need for new software, a Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) which was supposed to prevent stalling. Boeing’s view was that pilots did not need to be trained on the software and federal regulators agreed.

However, in an effective SRM program the C-Suite would have been advised that the strategic and life safety risks were material and that training for pilots was indeed necessary.  In addition, all such risks would have been assessed to determine whether they could be used to obtain a competitive advantage.

For example, including vital safety features in the base cost of aircraft (as opposed to charging extra for them) and requiring a focus group of pilots with no financial relationship with Boeing to test the newly designed 737 MAX 8s and the MCAS system would have been a way to solidify Boeing’s reputation for safety first.

An SRM program, which monitors progress in achieving strategic objectives with a focus on continuous improvement, would have looked at the Indonesian Lion Air and the Ethiopian Airlines crashes as an opportunity to confirm that Boeing puts safety first by grounding the aircraft. Instead, Boeing urged the U.S. to keep flying its jets until after 42 regulators in other countries had grounded them and appeared to care more about economics than life safety. Only seven months ago, Boeing was synonymous with efficient jet planes and commercial aviation – it was a reputation that took decades to build. Now, the company has a long, uphill climb to resolve its many challenges and rebuild its brand.

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An SRM program cannot succeed without full support from the C-Suite as it has to be integrated into the business model and decision-making processes in order to be effective, and in time we will learn more about what risk management protocols were followed across Boeing’s organization.

At RIMS 2019, Marian Cope will lead a panel of industry experts in discussing reasons to transform an ERM program into a SRM program or develop a SRM program in NextGen ERM:  Strategic Risk Management. The session will take place April 29th at 1:30 pm.