ORIMS panelists urge streamlining of corporate risk monitoring

Risk managers monitoring risk management plans need to be mindful that organizations’ executives are feeling over-monitored in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008-09.
As a result, if risk managers can think of any ways to reduce redundancy in how companies monitor or audit their risk management plans or controls, company executives would obviously appreciate it.
The observation was made at an Ontario Risk and Insurance Management (ORIMS) seminar in Toronto on Jan. 12
“We were discussing…about how our operations sometimes get very frustrated because they feel over-monitored,” said panelist Cathy Taylor, the head of risk management for ADP Canada, a provider of employer services. “For example, with an accident in mining, you might be visited several times by the insurance people, including the broker, then an internal audit would go out, and then the health and safety guys would go out, and then the regulators would be asking to go.
“Peoples’ jobs [at the mining company] were basically like tour guides. They could never really run the business because they had so much monitoring.”
Streamlining the auditing or monitoring process – perhaps by piggy-backing on other audits or visits by other organizations or agencies – might take some pressure off of the companies that must go through the process, panelists noted.
For example, a focus this year for Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is to achieve “much more integration with other assurance programs, and I think that will help in terms of monitoring,” said Emirissa Babin, manager of Enterprise Risk Management at OPG.