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Insurance CIO Outlook | Tuesday, July 12, 2022
Insurers face strategic risks threatening their value proposition and business model. Innovative technology and new competitive paradigms are fast transforming business.
FREMONT, CA: Insurers are confronted with various strategic risks—emerging risks that could undermine the assumptions underlying a company's value proposition and essential business model. Innovative technology and new competitive paradigms have a swift and profound impact on every aspect of the business. With a strategic risk management (SRM) framework, insurers can traverse these choppy waters proactively as the tides fluctuate.
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In today's constantly evolving, increasingly digitized economy, the potential for organizations and industries to be disrupted or even displaced by transformational changes in technology, the economy, and consumer preferences is rising. Emerging challenges that can damage a company's value offering and operations are among the insurance industry's strategic risks.
Unlike most other businesses, risk management is already a fundamental role of insurance companies, and many carriers have adopted enterprise risk management (ERM). However, these initiatives are not often intended to address strategic risks that are disruptive to an insurer's value proposition or business model and are challenging to predict measure, and mitigate.
To more effectively cope with game-changing technologies and new competition from nontraditional sources, insurers should consider adopting strategic risk management (SRM) as a holistic framework to not only help them manage the potential downsides of disruptive risks but also possibly achieve faster growth by being better prepared to capitalize on the opportunities that result. A shift to SRM is a normal progression along an insurance firm's risk management maturity curve, despite the transformational nature of the disruptive challenges carriers face.
Carriers implementing SRM programs should enjoy several benefits over rivals that do not. Therefore, insurers should consider ways to establish a model framework that enables them with the tools, strategies, and competencies to mitigate and exploit the dual nature of strategic risks. Insurers may want to consider the following stages as part of an SRM framework to implement SRM:
Establish an SRM capability
• Identify a leader
• Align the effects of strategic risks with the organization's risk tolerance.
• Utilize risk sensing instruments to produce early warning signals for developing strategic risks
Integrate SRM into risk-sensing
• Construct or build a risk sensing system to assist the C-suite and board of directors in staying abreast of the company's most significant strategic risks.
Create an action plan based on a situation
• Prepare an action plan formulated by a newly formed strategic risk oversight committee, with senior management and the board of directors' involvement and approval.
• Perform periodic simulated drills to assess readiness
Utilize cognitive tools to improve decision making
• Utilize computer-based simulation models to assist executives in evaluating the viability of their selections under diverse circumstances.
• Utilize a continuous feedback loop to identify cognitive pitfalls that impede strategic risk assessments.
• Implement corrective programs that improve decision-making and reduce the impact of biases.
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