The IRM’s annual Professional Development Forum, held at the Midland Hotel in Manchester in late April, was attended by over 300 risk professionals from more than 20 countries.

They were given a good news message by Richard Anderson, Chairman of the IRM and Managing Director at Crowe Horwath Global Risk Consulting, in his opening remarks. He argued that ‘risk management has never been as important as it is today. It is moving from the engine room to the boardroom’.

While there is a general belief that risk management is now growing in influence and importance, Mr Fowler intimated that the profession cannot rest on its laurels.

“The future is uncertain and risk management is the discipline for dealing with uncertainty. It is our job to help organisations deal with that uncertainty,” he began.  “But the world is changing and older approaches to risk management may no longer be appropriate.”

Mr Fowler pointed to social media as a major driver of that change. Facebook, for example, has over 500 million users, which would make it the third largest country in the world.

“Social media straddles the bridge between personal life and business life and we cannot ignore that community…The work place dynamic is changing, so old approaches to risk management are not going to get you very far,” argued the CEO.

“Our job is to help organisations prepare for the future. Social changes have brought about new technology and that very technology has changed society. This is the stuff we as risk managers are going to be dealing with over the next few years,” he continued.

Given these changes and the accessibility afforded by the internet, the IRM is targeting the broader risk community as it develops new methods of training.

It is looking beyond traditional approaches to education and later this year will launch a new website to ensure the fullest range of deliverable products and training options. The new website will cost £170,000 and aims to give users a much slicker experience.

“It will be particularly beneficial for those who want something more than just our conventional distance learning. We will be offering webinars and streamed training sessions through our website.  It will give us much better delivery of material and we are also ramping up our online knowledge portal service,” said Mr Fowler.

The institute’s knowledge portal is a collection of indexed learning materials and information on risk management that users can access. It is also a place risk professionals can deposit their own ideas on risk management, or interesting documents that they have come across, for others to use.

“These initiatives are about taking the institute beyond the historical approach to education, towards an online community for sharing information, knowledge and contacts,” enthused Mr Fowler.

However, the IRM also recognises that some students prefer a more traditional approach and demand on site learning. To this end the institute is in discussion with a range of universities around the world to teach and support IRM qualifications.

The IRM is also looking to develop the structure of its courses.

“We look at risk management as being a very broad community. The danger in risk management is that we tend to lump all risk managers together, as if they all do the same thing and we know that is not the case. They all have different skill requirements,” began Mr Fowler.

“So we are trying to develop an educational framework where all of the pieces fit together. So you start by taking a module in a particular subject, depending on your knowledge and need at a particular time, and then you can come back at a later date and build upon that. So it will be like buying individual sets of Lego bricks and users can assemble the pieces that they want,” he added.

Going forward risk professionals will have the option to become a full member of the institute and get its full package, or buy individual components that suit their needs.

The IRM also remains focused on its international expansion plans and hopes to have 50% non-UK membership in three years’ time.

The IRM now has over 4,000 members in total. Currently overseas membership stands at one third—up from just 5% to 10% three years ago. 

The increase includes large growth in the Gulf and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, particularly the United Arab Emirates. The IRM now has over 400 members from the Gulf region.

This is reflected in the international focus of its courses, explained Mr Fowler.

“Our courses need to be internationally focused for two reasons. You could be working in the UK but buy parts from the far east and export goods across the world. This means you need to know about risk management in both the supply and customer countries. Also by making our courses international it gives them a broader appeal to people outside of the UK,” he said.

Over the last year the IRM has launches two new courses—a financial services qualification and an introduction to the ISO 31000 risk management standard aimed at the broader risk community.

“What differentiates our financial services course from what everyone else offers is that you learn about both the insurance and banking industries at the same time. This gives people the opportunity to learn the lessons from banking to apply to insurance and visa versa, and there are so many overlaps when it comes to risk management in those sectors,” said the IRM’s CEO.

The two-day training course in Enterprise Risk Management, framed around ISO 31000, is not designed for risk managers but rather their colleagues who need a general understanding of risk management.

“So if you are a risk manager in a big industrial firm and need to get basic risk management messages over to the rest of the management team you can put them through this two-day programme. Again it’s a broader view of what we are about. We are very clearly the Institute of Risk Management, we are not the institute of risk managers, because risk management goes way beyond risk managers,” said Mr Fowler.

This course is now being taught around the world with upcoming programmes in Istanbul, Doha and Dubai.

This year will also see the IRM complete a root and branch review of its qualification structure.  Its Education Advisory Board of around 40 risk experts from around the world will help perform this task.

Mr Fowler also argued that any certification scheme for risk managers must reflect high professional standards.
“I hear a lot of people in the UK and Europe going on about chartered status and certification schemes for risk management but one has to look at what they are looking for. Many people seem to want a badge that says I am a proper risk manager but do not seem to want to put the work in to achieve that,” he said.

“There is a belief that you just build the experience and get the badge. Now if we look at analogies elsewhere, would you want to go to a surgeon who had only learnt on the job? Or a surgeon who had only been on a two-week course? Well no you wouldn’t. But when it comes to risk management I hear lots of people who advocate certification based purely on experience and short two- or three-day courses, but they are not professional schemes. I cannot believe that is right. The problem is people outside of risk management will look at it and say well it’s a Mickey Mouse qualification,” he added.

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