Enterprise Risk and Resilience in the Insurance and Group Benefits Sector

Enterprise Risk Management facilitates improved decision making through a structured understanding of opportunities and threats.

Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) addresses the full spectrum of an organization's risks, including commercial insurance and group benefits. ERM provides a strategically-aligned portfolio view of organizational challenges that provides improved insight into how to effectively prioritize, manage, and mitigate risks.

What is ERM?

ERM is a coordinated approach to identify potential events that may affect an organization, manage the associated risks and opportunities, and provide reasonable assurance that an organization’s mission, vision, and strategic objectives will be achieved. ERM helps ensure that the right information gets to the right people at the right time. By offering a strategically-aligned portfolio view of organizational challenges and opportunities, ERM creates a more risk-aware culture and offers insight into how best to prioritize and manage the risks inherent in carrying out the Organization’s mission.

Benefits of ERM

When applied effectively ERM can:

• Improve the organization’s capability to sense and respond to emerging risks before they become crises
• Provide key information on strategic planning, performance management and budget decisions
• Improve coordination across functional silos
• Promote reliable reporting and monitoring across business units

Integrating ERM into the Organization

All organizations have a variety of functions that identify and manage specific risks. However, each risk function varies in capability and how it coordinates with other risk functions. Successful integration of ERM into day to day decision-making and management practices enables organizations to leverage opportunities and avoid, mitigate, and transfer risk, resulting in more resilient, effective, and efficient organizations. There are many ERM resources and references available, and the Related Resources sidebar has a few to get you started.

ERM Maturity

Organizations with a true enterprise-wide risk management approach possess a current, holistic understanding of their risks that informs decision-making across the organization. These organizations have successfully instituted comprehensive processes and policies that effectively identify, assess, mitigate, and monitor their key strategic, operational, and external risks.

The sophistication and comprehensiveness of an organization's risk management is important because of the positive correlation to its ability to meet its strategic and performance objectives. Organizations with a deliberate, consistent, resourced, and integrated approach that effectively identifies, selects, and prudently mitigates risks are more likely to build long-term value as compared to organizations with a casual, opportunistic, or reactive approach.

Insurance Coverage Risks

Many organizations rely on limited information when acquiring insurance and group benefits, thereby exposing their organization to risks resulting from limited coverage and overpricing. CMR & Associates’ risk management consultants provide assistance in mitigating these risks by providing independent access to expanded market data and improved carrier, coverage and pricing options with the aim of improving coverage and reducing costs.

More Information

CMR & Associates’ risk management consultants provide independent insurance and retirement advice by reviewing your current plans to improve coverage and reduce cost. Through CMR’s proprietary database – The CMR Database® (comprised of some 13,000 brokers and specialists globally) – we maximize access to the insurance and retirement industry for greater options that will translate to better coverage and lower cost. 

Please email CMR Associates or call 877-447-4301 or 212-447-4300 for more information.