One of the lessons from my post on the objective of risk management was
that there are a number of perspectives on the objective of risk management.
I asked a number of leading industry experts to share their perspective.
Two weeks ago, I shared the views of James Tufts, Group CRO of
Guardian Financial Services (here). His perspective emphasised that the
objective of risk management is to clarify the role of risk management of the
business and of the risk function.
Today, I am delighted to share the views of Carlos Montalvo
Rebuelta, Executive Director of EIOPA. As a regulator, it is perhaps not
surprising that he focuses on the extent to which Solvency II regulation
changes the objective of risk management.
I will continue sharing these perspectives in the next few weeks.
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Solvency II: a revolution in risk culture?
Carlos Montalvo Rebuelta, Executive Director, EIOPA
As Executive Director of
EIOPA, in charge of managing the Authority and an insurance supervisor that has
faced very different approaches to risk management across national supervised
entities, I would like to touch upon the topic of risk management in insurance.
If we start the topic far
away from business, in Nature, we see how species try to do the best out of the
environment they operate in, in order to survive, yes, but also in order to
prevail and ensure a legacy. They are confronted with risks and they exploit
opportunities, risk management at its best, albeit in a very primitive form.
Within the corporate
world, but outside the financial sector, we may take the example of EIOPA,
where different toolkits are used to anticipate and address challenges, but
also to identify and grab opportunities. Risk logs, monitoring tools, clear
reporting lines, allocation of ownership for action… doesn’t that sound
familiar? Risk management, indeed, reinforced by the conviction from senior
management on the usefulness of it; setting the tone from the top.
A distinctive feature of
insurance and reinsurance is that the business itself is all about risk. The
core objective of (re)insurers is to deal with different kinds of risks making
a profit out of them. So, the industry should already have a wide range of
specific know-how and experience in the area of risk management, if only
because this is what the business is all about i.e. risk.
However, the financial
crisis has shown that financial market participants, including insurers, need
to rely on stronger risk management capabilities in order to deal with the
different challenges posed by the economic slowdown and the financial market
volatility. In other words, their risk management frameworks were not always up
to the challenge stemming from the crisis.
Self-regulation within
undertakings proved insufficient. Very often, any concerns raised about
long-term sustainability of the company were ignored or even ferociously
denied. Wrong incentives, short term gambits, unsustainable growth… reality was
far away from what undertakings claimed to be their situation, with the
consequences we all have witnessed.
The upcoming supervisory
and regulatory framework for insurance - Solvency II - is going to make
significant changes in the current risk culture of many insurers. It is a
different way of looking at and managing risks. First of all, it presents risk
management not as a point in time procedure, but as a continuous process that
should be used in the implementation of the undertaking’s overall strategy.
There is a purpose, and
tangible outcomes. The Solvency
II framework aims at establishing high quality risk
management standards that will be beneficial for insurance undertakings,
shareholders and consumers. One of the main
requirements of a risk-based regulatory regime is that risk and capital should
not be considered separately. This approach will allow top management to ensure
that the company does not take on more risks than its capital base allows. It
is also an opportunity for the senior executives to anchor a risk culture in an
insurer’s day-to-day operations; again, setting the tone from the top.
The
Solvency II regime requires insurers and reinsurers to have in place an
effective risk management system comprising strategies, processes and reporting
procedures necessary to identify, measure, monitor, manage and report, on a
continuous basis the risks, both at individual and aggregated levels, they are
or could be exposed, and their interdependencies. Nothing new under the sun?
Unfortunately, this is not the case.
One of the most innovative changes introduced by Solvency II is the
requirement that insurance companies develop their Own Risk and Solvency
Assessment (ORSA) as a tool of their overall risk management system. Insurers
will need to properly assess their own short- and long-term risks as well as
the amount of their own funds necessary to cover them to ensure on-going
compliance with capital requirements. Quoting the lyrics of a song by The
Velvet Underground, “I will be your mirror, reflect what you are, in case you
don’t know it”.
I believe that the
Solvency II approach to risk management will allow for an enhanced
understanding of the nature and significance of the risks to which a company is
exposed, including its sensitivity to those risks and its ability to mitigate
them. This understanding will help companies to see their real opportunities
and manage their business on that
basis.Strong risk management will also be
beneficial also for the customers of insurance companies. It will allow
insurers to better meet their claims towards clients and, thus, to promote
confidence in the insurance sector.
All in all, Solvency II should lead to a win-win situation and bring a
risk-based regulatory framework to a business that deals with risk.
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If you work in financial services, I would be keen to hear your
thoughts about this perspective on the objective of risk management. If
you don’t, I would be keen to know if these lessons resonate with your
experience.
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can subscribe to future posts here.
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