In July Gillian le Cordeur was appointed as the general manager of IRMSA and brought over eight years’ association management experience. Just before Ms Le Cordeur’s appointment IRMSA also hired Bronwyn Blyth to assist with the IRMSA events and marketing activities.

Ms Blyth is also involved with the Cruywagen IRMSA Risk Foundation, the body that kindly sponsored Commercial Risk Europe’s trip to last week’s IRMSA conference.

Ms Le Cordeur and Ms Blyth worked closely with Event Committee Chair and Vice President of IRMSA, Sheralee Morland, Executive responsible for Enterprise Risk Management at Nedbank at group level.

Looking forward, Mr Thessner said that the ‘big thing’ for him in 2012 will be the development of IRMSA’s role as an educational and professional body.

On 10 October, IRMSA received notification from the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) that it has been chosen to take part in the pilot phase of the SAQA Qualifications and Standards Committee, for recognition of professional bodies on the NQF.

Mr Thessner said that this is a ‘huge achievement’ for the IRMSA Education and Technical Committee not least because out of the 74 bodies that applied to SAQA, only 10 were selected.

Mr Thessner explained that the IRMSA Education and Technical Committee, under the leadership of Pieter le Roux, who works for Standard Bank South Africa (SBSA) as a senior manager overseeing compliance and other risk training and development initiatives, is ‘hard at work’ to ensure that all the requirements set out by SAQA are fulfilled.

Mr Thessner said that a meeting will be called early in 2012 to give members the opportunity to discuss the different designations, the criteria and the ‘professionalisation process’.

“You would all prefer to be accredited by IRMSA and for this to be widely recognised in business and therefore a big focus for 2012 will be to get recognised. For me this is a wonderful thing that will happen in 2012. We have over 200 people here at this conference and only 55 people are non-members. Go and register now!” added Mr Thessner during his closing speech.

Mr Thessner also took the opportunity to remind delegates of the importance of the IRMSA Risk Manager of the Year awards that are announced at the annual Gala Dinner.

This year’s winner was Philip Wessels, Group Chief Risk Officer of Nedbank who took the award from last year’s winner Errol Kruger, former Registrar of Banks in South Africa who has since taken up the position of Managing Director of the Supervision and Authorisation at the Qatar Financial Centre.

Mr Wessels took this year’s award for his leadership that has meant that Nedbank has become ‘well recognised and highly regarded’ for its effective risk management processes and governance principles, explained IRMSA when it announced the awards.

“His aspiration to ensure ‘no surprises’ is a vision that his staff of some 450 buy into and are committed to. Risk management has been embedded seamlessly into business processes. Philip has led risk management within Nedbank for close on seven years and achieved the status of the first SA bank that has received South African Reserve Bank approval for trading market risk IMA, diversified AMA for operational risk and AIRB for credit risk,” continued IRSMA at the time.

Antonella da Cunha of Capespan was the first runner up in this category.

Chereece Fawcett of Standard Bank took second place in the Rookie Risk Manager of the Year Award, with first place going to Kabelo Letebele of Medscheme.

“Kabelo has brought into the risk role at Medscheme a lot of passion, energy and structure to make risk management visible within the group. Noting that he has only been in this field for less than two years, he has actively sought to improve himself whilst succeeding in executing his mandate. He has entrenched the risk management culture, continuously engaged the organisation with the aim of raising the profile of risk management within the group and ensured that the risk management process remains effective and value adding to the business,” explained IRMSA.

In the Industry Initiative categories, Vodacom won the Telecoms Industry Initiative, with MTN in second place. Airports Company South Africa won the Public Sector award and AngloGold Ashanti took first place in the Mining, Resources, Construction, Engineering and related services category. Imperial Holdings came first in the Retail, Hospitality and related services category.

“IRMSA is on the move, a lot of good things are happening. Don’t be left behind!” concluded Mr Thessner as he wrapped up the annual conference last week.

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