What’s New: In Brief (January 25, 2008)

A.M. Best has published a rating methodology outlining how risk management is incorporated into the overall rating process for insurers and reinsurers, and exploring the key risk-management trends in the insurance industry.
“Risk Management and the Rating Process for Insurance Companies,” details the three key areas that A.M. Best believes encompasses enterprise risk management.
The three areas include:
culture the establishment of an environment throughout an organization from the board level to senior management, to business line management, to the employee that embeds risk awareness and accountability in daily operation;
identification and management the ability to consistently identify key risks across the entire organization, and to establish uniform controls and procedures to effectively manage and mitigate the impact of those risks to the organization;
measurement the use of sophisticated tools and data collection to quantify risks, including the impact of risk correlations within and among the five categories of risk taking into account the impact of general economic conditions, industry-specific events and extreme events and report these risk assessments to senior management on a regular basis.

Ryan Ogaard has been appointed global leader for Guy Carpenter & Company, LLC’s Instrat unit.
In his new post Ogaard is charged with overseeing the firm’s worldwide network of actuaries, cat modellers, financial experts and software developers located throughout 14 countries, a Guy Carpenter release says.
Ogaard is also a member of the Americas board and the specialty executive committee.