Last week I attended RMIA 2010 at the Darling Harbour Convention Centre in Sydney.  I am particularly biased about how great it was as I was on the organising committee, however, I have been going to these conferences for many years and the quality of the content was definitely the best from my perspective.

So much has been said about the challenge of risk professionals to get the ear of the C-Suite and this was a major focus of the conference.  One of the highlights was a “debate” amongst association representatives from Chartered Secretaries, Institute of Actuaries, Chartered Accountants and Internal Auditors about the C-suite and who owns the space regarding risk management.  I think the poignant moment came when Lee White from the Institute of the Chartered Accountants commented that at the end of the day “the market will decide” where it gets its risk management advice from.

I agree wholeheartedly, however, all risk consultants, no matter their original discipline, need to ensure they are as well rounded and unbiased in their advice to clients.  In my experience, and I am making a huge generalisation here so apologies to those who are not like this, auditors and accountants tend to be too finance and controls focussed, insurance people tend to be too orientated to insurable risks and secretarial types tend to be too orientated towards legal matters.  At the end of the day a company’s biggest risk can arise from any area of the organisation and a good risk consultant should be trying their very best to ensure that all sources of risks are treated equally until analysed and prioritised.