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Last week, at RIMS ERM Conference 2011, we announced that LogicManager and RIMS (The Risk and Insurance Management Society) have selected Queens University Management School (QUM) to update the landmark 2008 study that quantified a direct, positive relationship between the maturity of an organization's risk management framework and its business performance.  Read the full press release here.

The 2011 update will gather data just as the 2008 study did, using real organization's data compared again

Being a risk leader in your organisation is always a challenge. More than once I have been asked "How do you get a blustering, super confident CEO to slow down and listen to what we are trying to achieve in the risk function?" Unfortunately I don't have the silver bullet, however, here are a few tips which are explored in more depth in RMP's Whitepaper titled "Risk Leadership: How to be Heard".

1. Target - Identify all the stakeholders you need to influence. Identify the order in which you wish

Highlights of new FATF list of jurisdictions that are AML/CFT Compliance deficient: -

Iran and North Korea remain on list of jurisdictions subject to a FATF call on its members and other jurisdictions to apply counter-measures to protect the international financial system from the on-going and substantial money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) risks emanating from the jurisdictions.

Nigeria and Sao Tome added to list of jurisdictions identified by FATF to have strategic AML/CFT deficie

In this month’s newsletter I have given some thought to the identification of flawed business models and the concept of Business Model Risk.  I got some great feedback and ideas from GRC members last month on the subject.

Key questions to be asked include:

• How sound and sustainable is the underlying growth and profitability ?
• Does the business truly own a piece of the value chain or is it essentially just a trader ?
• Does the business need to continually engage in high or excessive risk taking to sus

Two stories in the news recently have caught my eye: one involving a listeria outbreak caused by tainted cantaloupe, and the other involving Citigroup losing $285 million for defrauding investors.

In the cantaloupe story, the deadly, nationwide listeria outbreak was traced to a packing facility in Colorado operated by Jensen Farms, in which factors such as workers and trucks accidentally carrying the disease into the facility, and machinery being hard to sanitize created the environment in which

New companies with a market capitalization under USD 1 billion will now be able to opt-out of regulations within section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act for the first ten years after going public. This option was previously available to companies under USD 75 million.

Congressman Ben Quayle introduced the Startup Expansion and Investment Act to, “make it easier for emerging companies to access the capital necessary to expand and create jobs”. Quayle noted that removing one of the many regula

Lack of knowledge means more uncertainty means greater risk. Assumed knowledge can be even more dangerous than lack of knowledge and risk workshops are a safe haven for assumptions because of time limitations and dominant personalities. Here are four sources of assumptions with some tips on how to handle them during a risk workshop:

1. Seniority - When you have senior people in the room, too many people a ssume they are right, or will give them the benefit of any doubt in their mind because of th

Risk managers are charged with ensuring transparency, alignment, and forward looking views throughout the organization.  The way this is achieved is through risk assessments. 

Successful enterprise risk assessments can be a powerful tool for board and management level strategic decision making by connecting business activities to goals and identifying the risks that threaten to derail these strategic objectives.  An unsuccessful risk assessment is little more than a form over substance activity t

The FRM test date is coming up quickly, so Abara is offering free FRM practice questions & answers. Just follow @AbaraLearning on Twitter for daily practice questions from our FRM experts. Be sure to check in daily, we'll be posting answers the following day and new questions until the test date on November 19th.

abara.com
twitter.com/AbaraLearning

Businesses need to update carbon and climate change aspects of their risk management plans because many still have only basic contingency plans, which will be insufficient when the Federal Government’s proposed carbon scheme becomes law, says a renowned expert.

Tony Coleman is a non-executive director of Low Carbon Australia and was Insurance Australia Group's chief risk officer and chief actuary from 2000 to 2008. He was part of the 2006 Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, a member

We are undertaking some research into the primary challenges faced by insurance/reinsurance professionals and plan to prepare a series of informative white papers addressing the issues which we hope will be of great value to the community.

Key questions will include  

• What significant changes are occurring in your
       community?
• What are the major financial challenges faced by
       members of the community today?
• Have people in the community generally been
       successful in addressing these challenge

I envisage that we can by sometime next year (if we put our minds to it) create a self adjusting economy that needs little intervention and that can adjust to changing rates of inflation and other impacts much more easily than the economy that we have now.

To spell it out with forceful intent I called it Ingram's Law.

What is that?

It is the need to structure all of our debt instruments, taxes, accounting systems and stores of wealth in such a way that the economy stays in balance as average inc

In any case we need large tracts of Sovereign Debt as the basis for safer pensions and other critical savings. But there is a condition to be met...http://edward-ingram.blogspot.com/p/our-new-world.html

RMIA is proud to offer all GRC members the members discounted rate!

Earlybird closes tomorrow so register today!

www.rmiaconference.com

20-22 November 2011
Crown Towers, Melbourne

Strong line up for Chief Risk Officer Forum

Delegates will get a rare insight into what keeps chief risk officers awake at night on Tuesday, 22 November’s morning session. Moderator Greg d’Arville will tease out frank admissions from the panel on cutting-edge concepts like the new risk classifications of ‘simple’, ‘complex’

Reg. E ( specifically 205.11 Procedures for resolving errors
) as those in the business who know like to call it is, in short, the law gives
consumers protection and certain rights regarding claims of fraud and/ or
errors on their bank accounts.

When this provision was first
established, it was a victory for the honest consumer because some banking institutions
may have made it incumbent upon the consumer to prove they did not commit the
fraud reported in their accounts resulting in denial of their cla

In an earlier blog post, the idea of managing both quantity and quality of risk was introduced.  

But what exactly is Risk Quality?  

At the most simple level, risk quality can be indicated as the rate of risk per unit of activity.  

Risk Quantity = Business Activity Level x Risk Quality

So the suggestion is that a risk management system should pay close attention to that rate of risk as well as the Quantity of risk.  See Riskviews Post on risk quality for further discussion.  

But the risk manage