Julia discusses how geopolitics, technology and climate change are driving the agenda for organisation's risk profiles. The conversation reflects on the interconnectivity in risks and how risk professionals need to become comfortable with uncertainty.
Helen and Julia also discuss:
- the importance of proactivity in responding to risk
- how the role of the risk manager is changing in response to emerging risks
- why horizon scanning is essential in today's polycrisis world
Julia begins this insightful episode by comparing the Airmic conference to a fun fair and how that analogy translates into insurance and risk management.
Preview
Helen Yates: Hello and welcome to the Navigating Risk Podcast where we take a deep dive into the trend shaping the global risk landscape. My name is Helen Yates and I'm editor of thought leadership at Gallagher. In this episode, I talked to Julia Graham, chief executive of Airmic. We spoke one week on from Airmic's annual conference in Liverpool, which was focused on the topics of geopolitics, technology and climate change. I began by asking Julia to tell me about this year's conference theme and what it represented.
Julia Graham: Well, thank you very much for speaking to me today. And yes, I would be delighted to talk about the conference. The interesting approach that we took this year is that we took the analogy of a fun fair, and we used that in several ways. One of them was mirrored on the road system in Paris, where all the roads point to the Arc de Triumph. But when you get there, you've got to have something amazing to look at, and there can't be many things more amazing than the Arc de Triumph.
And what we said is that roads point to Airmic at the conference, but when people get there, we've got to give them something that makes them want to stay. So, we use that analogy and we also use the analogy of various rides at the funfair. So, are you a roller coaster person? Or are you a roundabout person, and I would argue in today's world, which is much more like riding a roller coaster, you never really quite know what the thrill is going to be. That's the type of situation that you need to be prepared for. But we said if you're on the carousel, however, that's a gentle ride, but you can't just sit there and watch it spin. You've got to do something about the world. So, it was all about another world is possible, but don't just sit there watching the world spin get involved and do something about it. So that was the broad thing. Be proactive. The world will not come to you, you have to go to the world, and therefore that's the role of the professional that's emerging and a great deal of our agenda over the three days was about educating tomorrow's risk professional in the type of role that they're going to be required to deliver. And that's not the role that they delivered in the past.
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