Posts by Carol Williams

Carol Williams

168 posts

https://www.erminsightsbycarol.com

Will Inflation be a Gray-Rhino in 2021?

Soon after COVID-19 began affecting the U.S. last March, I spotted a brief article on LinkedIn from Hans Læssøe explaining how the pandemic was not a “black swan” event as some were saying but rather a “gray-rhino.” As you may know, a “black swan” is an unforeseen, improbable event, be it positive or negative, which…

Top 21 Risk Management (…and Other) Resources for 2021

Happy New Year!! As of this writing, the year 2020 is officially in the rearview mirror. Suffice it to say that between the COVID pandemic, a contentious election year here in the U.S., a record-breaking hurricane season, and other challenges, we are all glad to bid the past year farewell. Personally, the year had its…

Building the Better Insurance Consumer for 2021

With the upcoming Christmas holiday, we’re hastily working to wrap up (literally!!) a few loose ends, so this week’s post is a little different… I recently had the pleasure of appearing on the Florida Insurance Roundup podcast to discuss the qualities both consumers and industry professionals must have in order to get the most out…

Harnessing the Power of Visual Aids to Prompt Robust Risk Conversations

There’s a good chance – 65% in fact – that you are a visual learner. I personally put myself in this category. Rather than reading text or listening to instructions, I always perform better and remember more through visual aids, especially on a subject I’m not familiar with. Numerous research studies back up my personal…

Why Following ERM Best Practices Can Do More Harm than Good

Woven into many of my posts from the last 4+ years is the advice that ERM best practices should be approached with caution. While the updated COSO and ISO 31000 standards can be great starting points for some organizations, simply copying another organization’s policies and practices comes with many drawbacks that will eventually become painful.…

What a Calm Act of Heroism Can Teach Us about Risk Management

I remember the day well… I was in my office on a cold and blustery January day when news came of a plane crash in New York City, but unlike other crashes in times past, there were few injuries and no fatalities. Later dubbed the “Miracle on the Hudson,” the events of that day were…

Building a Performance-Focused Risk Management Process Step #3: Enable and Empower

For today’s post, I would like to share an article originally published in the Fall 2020 issue of The Demotech Difference, a journal targeting midsize property & casualty insurance companies. This article is the third in a four-part series exploring the foundations of a performance-focused risk management process. Articles one and two in the series…

ERM in the Spotlight

In times of great upheaval for industries or financial markets, organizations often turn to the formal discipline of enterprise risk management. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis, for example, ERM gained traction as many organizations realized the significant drawbacks of a traditional siloed risk management approach. But widespread ERM adoption remains…

An Easier Way to Understand the Effectiveness of Risk Controls

KRIs, KPIs, ORSA, ISO, COSO…risk controls, risk owners, risk appetite. The acronyms, the alphabet soup, oh my! To anyone with little to no experience, risk management jargon can be dizzying and confusing, especially to executives who are often deluged with risk registers, reports, and processes that are overwhelming and not helpful for managing the organization…

Is Quantitative the Only Future of Risk Management?

Quantitative methods for understanding how risk and uncertainty impacts the organization is a subject I’ve been focusing on more this year. Without a doubt, modeling, Monte Carlo simulation, and other advanced math-based methods can be a valuable tool for helping decision-makers in certain companies. Many risk management thought leaders, including some I quote often like…

Posts by Carol Williams

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