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How to Leverage Risk Management to Influence Positive Business Outcomes

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Business strategy and risk management occupy separate spaces in most organizations. Business strategy sits at an enterprise or executive level, but risk management usually functions at a tactical and operational level. A chasm often exists between the two groups, removing important risk-based context from pivotal business decisions.

To bridge the chasm, risk management professionals must demonstrate to business leaders the value of the information they possess for one primary reason: the long-term growth and good of the business. Risk management today, bolstered by advances in technology, contains vital data that can inform executive decision-making to support business strategy, reduce risks and ensure long-term growth. To that end, risk management professionals need to take four steps.

1: Understand Enterprise-level Objectives, Outcomes, and Metrics.

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Objectives might include increasing revenue, launching a new product or providing customer support in a timelier fashion. These objectives are strategic in nature and can be broken down into specific business outcomes such as increasing production by a certain percentage or publishing a set number of technology upgrades or enhancements each year. The business outcomes, in their own turn, are tracked and measured using business metrics.
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2: Correlate Business Objectives with Risk Management Activities. Risk management professionals can assess how enterprise-level concerns correlate to what risk management is doing on a day-to-day basis. This requires a distinct shift in perspective, since activities such as conducting risk assessments, establishing controls to mitigate the impact of risks and assessing residual risk—while incredibly important for risk managers—do not directly tie into the enterprise’s business objectives and strategies.

3: Establish Leading Key Indicators that Tie to Business Outcomes. Risk management personnel need to establish a leading key risk indicator (KRI) that has a direct relationship with the desired business outcome. Typically, key indicators tend to be lagging in nature, such as tracking the number of cyberattacks that happened over the past quarter. This is useful information, but it is not effective in influencing business metrics or business outcomes. A leading indicator, in contrast, is one which provides advance notice of a situation before a risk event is experienced so that action can be taken to avoid or mitigate the impact of the event.

4: Present Metrics that Support Decision-Making.
Risk management professionals must also present these metrics in such a way that it supports decision-making by the target audience. In particular, risk metrics and key indicator need to be presented in their business context and in a manner that drives action.

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When a risk metric or key indicator shows that action must be taken to avoid loss or achieve gain, it becomes valuable to business leaders and decision makers.

Driving value related to business strategy requires both time and commitment on the part of risk management professionals. Once that value is proven, target audiences will begin to rely on and request KPIs and KRIs to support decision-making. They will understand the relationships between risk metrics and business outcomes. With this deeper understanding, risk management will no longer be viewed solely as an operational risk mitigation function. It will also be seen as a strategic function that contributes vital intelligence necessary for the long-term growth of the enterprise.

Mitigating Construction Risks with Advanced Training Techniques

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Construction is consistently ranked as one of the riskiest jobs in the United States. Fluid workforces, high-risk scenarios and a communication disconnect between home office and front-line workers all result in the very real possibility of serious injury or even death.

One of the major challenges in the construction industry is getting information and training to the front-line workers who face the most risk, but are often the least informed. Company emails and company-issued phones go as far as the foremen but do not always make it down to the crew themselves. Training is not always readily available or is more compliance-based than it is practical for the day’s work. This creates major risks for front-line workers, contractors, insurers and anyone involved with ensuring construction projects are safely and accurately completed. As a result, the construction industry is increasingly turning to new virtual and mobile technology tools. In an effort to improve its communication and training practices and provide critical information to its workers.

Visualizing High-Risk Scenarios

New, interactive modules are allowing safety teams to offer more effective and engaging job-site training in the form of videos, quizzes, virtual reality and 3D simulators. Exposure-based training platforms can also provide a “hands-on” experience, giving front-line workers the opportunity to encounter different situations while in a safe environment.

For example, a 3D simulation of a “hazard hunt” tests workers by having them identify all of the potential hazards on a building such as tilt, unsafe conditions and proximity to power lines and how to mitigate those risks. Fire safety prevention can be made into an immersive experience to help a worker identify the proper fire extinguisher based on the simulated fire, increasing the likelihood that they will make the right choice in the event of an emergency.

Simulations can also take tradesmen step-by-step through the process of working on specific tasks, allowing them to learn the process from start to finish and monitoring for the most common risk exposures. To become a signalman when working with cranes, the current process is to watch videos and memorize the hand motions. With simulators, workers can now be put into specific scenarios and learn how to proceed in the safest way and without endangering the person or equipment. Ultimately, new exposure-based training helps workers overcome any natural inclinations that put them in harm’s way and increases their awareness of all the risks of a specific task or job site.

Facilitating Effective Communication

Construction workers may be on a site for three months, or they might work on a job for one day. In both cases, contractors take on the same level of risk when it comes to ensuring each employee is appropriately trained. And with a workforce that is constantly in motion, construction managers face the challenge of tracking who has been trained on what. Paper filing systems and limited access to the training records while onsite can lead to oversights when it comes to identifying improperly trained workers.

Virtual training allows contractors to more easily track exactly who is trained on what, and store the important documents in a digital archive. By keeping critical information readily available digitally, onsite managers can more quickly confirm and step in if someone is not properly trained and manage overall communication for the duration of the project even as the job site’s workforce changes.    

Builders are also using digital communication platforms to address the communication disconnect between the home office and the front-line workforce, and in order to reduce the risk of miscommunication. These apps allow teams to send messages, emergency alerts and even just-in-time training videos that can highlight safety hazards specific to the job site to individuals or entire crews in an instant, helping to reduce unnecessary work stoppages and operational friction. They can also deliver micro-training refresher courses so that workers can better retain and implement the new knowledge and skills they have learned.

By deploying new types of digital training techniques, companies can improve communication and provide the front-line workforce with the right information to make safe decisions on a job site, reducing overall risk and most importantly, ensuring that their workers get home safely.

Using Captives to Insure Against Black Swan Events

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Until recently, a global pandemic was, in most people’s minds, little more than a compelling plot to blockbuster films and apocalyptic science-fiction stories. A disease drastically changing the way of life and business operations for people across the globe and inciting wide-spread fear, quarantines and stay-at-home regulations was unthinkable for most beyond the “prepper” community. Now, though, after weeks of lives overturned, hindsight is 20/20 (pun intended). Many business owners and executive teams now agree the threat was obvious. A black swan.

As popularized by finance professor and Wall Street trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb in relation to financial markets, the term “black swan” refers to a rare or low-probability event that deviates from what is normally expected but poses critical threat. The 2008 financial crisis, the 2001 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the 9/11 terrorist attack and the dot-com crash of 2000 are all considered black swan events. We can never know with specificity which particular black swan will come, but we can know with certainty that one eventually will. And, due to their severe consequences, we should therefore consider how to make sure our lives and businesses will be robust against them. 

Insurance for Black Swans

Third-party commercial insurance policies often include business interruption coverage. Business interruption insurance protects against losses sustained due to periods of suspended operation. With COVID-19, many businesses considered non-essential have been forced to close and numerous businesses that are still hanging on have experienced challenges to their revenue streams as a result of coronavirus restrictions. This is where this form of insurance comes into play. However, pandemics are not the only black swans that business interruption insurance would cover. It could also cover losses from unexpected events like natural disasters, cybersecurity attacks, terrorist attacks or fallout from climate change. Also, even if a business’s insurance policy does not cover pandemic disease through business interruption, it is possible that other policies might be triggered due to the chain reaction caused by the black swan, such as:

  • Supply Chain Interruption
  • Loss of Key Customer
  • Subcontractor Default
  • Property (e.g., loss of access to business premises due to quarantines)
  • Catastrophic Risks

However, third-party commercial insurance policies are not always enough. These policies are often riddled with exclusions that prevent coverage during the time it is most needed and can lead to a claim being denied. Commercial insurance for an asymmetrical threat like a black swan event can also be extremely costly or difficult to obtain. And in many cases, coverage is simply unavailable. For example, during the avian flu epidemic, many U.S. insurers added an exclusion to their policies, “Exclusion for Loss Due to Virus or Bacteria” (ISO form COP 01 40 07 06). Similarly, the insurance industry responded to SARS by adding exclusions to preclude coverage for losses triggered by business interruption.

Businesses need to review their insurance policies to identify gaps in coverage. Some may want to consider filling these gaps and strengthening their coverage by supplementing the third-party commercial insurance by pooling their risks in a captive insurance company.

Taking Black Swans Captive

A captive insurance company is a licensed insurance company that is usually owned by a related business or its owner. That company can then insure a wide variety of the related business’s risks—risks likely to be implicated in any black swan event such as supply chain interruption, loss of a key supplier or customer, subcontractor default, bankruptcy of certain counterparties, or losses from governmental actions like forced business suspension or quarantines.

Via reinsurance arrangements, the captive insurance company can then pool its risks with the risks of many unrelated business, usually including those in completely different industries. Some of those businesses and industries will no doubt be the beneficiaries of most any given black swan event.  

For example, some physician practices that specialize in elective surgeries have seen their revenues cut by half overnight due to states prohibiting such procedures in order to preserve medical equipment for use by those fighting COVID-19 on the front lines. But other medical practices have seen their revenues skyrocket as COVID-19 has spiked demand for their services. By risk pooling via a captive insurance company, the claims of those practices that are suffering will therefore be paid in part by those that are prospering. This loss-sharing will allow the former to stay in business and continue covering their costs (such as rent and salaries), thereby making the entire economy more robust. And next time around, the proverbial shoes may just be on the other feet. In some cases captive insurance companies may also receive very favorable tax treatment that also provides additional liquidity during times of crisis. 

Preparing for the Next Black Swan Event

The coronavirus has heightened awareness of the need for both risk management and strategic planning to prevent future crises from negatively impacting company financials and viability. Sadly, not all businesses will remain healthy and viable through this pandemic, and it is too late for those impacted by the coronavirus to insure those particular losses. But business owners and executives can take immediate steps now to prepare for the next black swan, whatever it may be and whenever it may come. 

Earth Day 2020: What Does Climate Change Mean for Risk Management?

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On Earth Day 2020, risk professionals can reflect on ways to protect both the environment and their businesses. Worldwide, climate change poses countless risks, including increasing the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters, reducing access to resources and disrupting supply chains.

To celebrate Earth Day and help risk management professionals address environmental risks and climate change, here is a roundup of some of our coverage from the past year about these critical topics:

From Risk Management Magazine:

Aligning Sustainability and Risk Management: A collaborative approach between sustainability and ERM can best drive real change.

Taking Action on Climate Change: As the potentially devastating impacts of climate change become clear, risk managers must assess the resulting risk exposures and ­opportunities for their companies.

Insurers Divest from Coal Over Climate Risks: Insurers are pulling coverage and investments related to the mining and use of coal.

Will Climate Change Impact Reinsurance Rates?: As natural disaster losses mount, the reinsurance response could spur action on climate change.

Getting Serious About ESG Risks: Investors are increasingly scrutinizing environmental, social and governance activity.

From the Risk Management Monitor blog:

Venice Sees Near-Record Flooding: The city of Venice, Italy, faced the worst flooding of its famous canals since the devastating floods of 1966, suffering major economic impacts.

Catastrophic Floods More Frequent in 2019: Major flooding has become a normal occurrence for many regions of the country, and by all indications, it is becoming worse each year.

Global Heat Waves Signal Climate Risks: The pattern of dangerous heat waves has become a yearly occurrence across the globe. 

Texas Study Shows Business Impact of Major Storms: The large storms hitting the coast of Texas are having serious impacts on industries across the state and country.

Limit Organizational Exposure During the Polar Vortex: Tips for protecting businesses during the frigid weather phenomenon.