Crossing Thin Ice

Achieving Resilience

Resilience can be described as bending without breaking. There are four aspects of ERM that all need to be fully adopted to achieve this important result. By Dave Ingram.

Using Risk Appetite: Contrarian Views

It is commonly assumed that higher returns require higher risk to be accepted. Fear and greed may outperform over the short term but often the last investor in does poorly. Long periods of stimulus provide warning that economic cycles come to an end eventually. By Max Rudolph.

Regime Changes lead to New Normal

Radical changes in our Physical, Political, Economic and Social systems have been and will continue to buffet humanity. Every so often the combined result is a major change of regime in which new patterns for each of these systems develops and persists for some time creating a new normal.  We make the case that this is coming in our world. By Max Rudolph and Dave Ingram

Leverage: The Flip Side of Risk Management

It was tempting, when interest rates were so low, to borrow just because you could. But that may not be best for an organization from a risk/reward perspective.  Leverage can have a major impact on the risk profile that is not usually considered. Leverage is actually the flip side of risk management.  By Dave Ingram

Climate Migration

No one is arguing anymore that the planet is not getting hotter, but what are the limits to temperature rise for humans survival? The ramifications for those who live in poverty in tropical zones is that they will need to move because of the heat. The alternatives are unacceptable. The world needs a plan to deal with massive climate migration. By Max Rudolph.

Risk and Capital

Stakeholder perception about the appropriate level of risk and the corresponding capital level varies. Some insurers focus on optimizing income and disbursements, while others find their goals aligned by holding redundant capital. Here we discuss several broad choices for the level of capital and the pros and cons of each based upon common business objectives. By Dave Ingram.

Interactions between risks: Implications for building scenarios

Historically, scenarios have focused on one assumption at a time but that is not realistic in today’s quickly evolving world. Risk interactions are very important considerations and impact scenario assumptions dynamically. Three narrative scenarios that interact between financial and non-financial risks are discussed. By Max Rudolph.

Why Insurers Do ERM

Enterprise Risk Management is practiced in different ways by insurers. Some focus on the basics while others consider ERM as a strategic strength. In a recent survey, ARM asked what is most important to them about ERM.

After COVID

Prior to 2019, Pandemic was the most studied emerging risk. And now that one has happened, it is time to study our reactions to COVID. In this podcast, we look at the reactions that people typically have to near death experiences and find that they are similar to the reactions that companies are having to COVID. Several very different reactions have been observed, but only one has a lasting favorable impact on the risk management program. By Dave Ingram 

Six Futures for ERM

Scenario based planning is good for forming company strategy and it can also be good for planning risk management. There are a number of ways that the future might play out for risk management and the likelihood of each of the six possibilities mentioned here has probably changed significantly because of our experiences over the past two years. Which future will you be prepared for and which would have been a total surprise if you hadn’t listened to this podcast? By Dave Ingram