Articles - Global Risks with Steve Wilson


St Ermin's Hotel has played host to some truly historic events including the meeting led by Sir Winston Churchill to establish the SOE (Special Operations Executive). The unit carried out covert operations during WW2, from their headquarters- an entire floor of St. Ermin's Hotel. With MI6 being stationed two floors above. With over 1,000,000 operatives worldwide it was here at St Ermin's that the strategies were developed and the risks associated with these covert operations were assessed and managed. How fitting then that I am here to meet with Steve Wilson, Chief Risk Officer, General Insurance with Zurich Insurance Company to discuss the 2013 Global Risk report.

 Interview conducted by Ivan Clarke at St Ermin's Hotel, London

 Lee Howell, MD of the Risk Response Network, states in the report's Foreword that 'global risks are often diminished, or even ignored, in current enterprise risk management.' Do you agree with this and why do you think ERM overlooks/ ignores global risks? 

 Yes I do agree with Lee and the reason is a lot of ERM frameworks are very industry specific and a lot of advisers base their view from a specific industry standpoint so that tends to narrow the scope of their analysis. This is the only report that I am aware of that truly takes a global picture across all risk types.

 When looking at the results of this year's report compared to 2012's report, the general distribution of the risks on the risk landscape have remained similar. However in this year's report respondents have seen risks as more likely and having a higher impact. Why do you think this is?

 I think that there are a couple of things going on. First, we have significantly extended the number of respondents to the survey so it may be in part that from this larger population we have a slightly different emphasis. Secondly, it could in part be that people are becoming more sensitive and aware of these issues and are therefore giving them more weight than they had previously. We certainly felt the responses were very well informed.

 To read the remainder of this interview click the cover of our latest Digital Magazine below:

 

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