For example, issues like human rights and climate change are gaining traction among stakeholder groups; they should be of concern to the organisation as well. Stressing that all this goes beyond just business continuity management, he said it was more about taking the business to the next level as the world moves out of the pandemic phase.
“It’s also about how we should evolve from good practice to best practice,” he pointed out, adding that from the governance perspective, the proper policies needed to be set. He noted that central banks were becoming stricter, and there was still a great deal of uncertainty in the business environment, with the possibility of many countries reverting to lockdowns to stem the spread of infections. Despite the situation, opportunities could still arise but “If you don’t manage the risk, you cannot derive opportunities from it,” he cautioned.
Emphasising that good corporate governance and risk management ultimately the responsibility of the board, he acknowledged that organisations wanted to ensure that their businesses were run effectively and sustainably, bearing in mind the risk-reward trade-off, i.e., the higher the risk, the higher the reward. Risk management, he added, was not so much about the mathematics of risk, as the psychology of risk. “What we need to have as a constant in the organisation is core values,” he concluded. “Risk management needs to become part of the DNA of the organisation.”
The discussion which followed the keynote presentation, chaired by Ramesh, also saw presentations from Allan Sum, CRO, Bintai Kinden Corporation Berhad, and Maheran Nor Salfarina Salim, Head, Enterprise Risk & Governance, Petronas Refinery and Petrochemical Corp Sdn Bhd. Sharing his personal experiences, Allan said that when he started, his company did not have a comprehensive risk management strategy but training from the Institute of Enterprise Risk Practitioners helped develop it. Even so, he said, “It’s not easy to start Enterprise Risk Management from ground zero!”
25 The IERP® Monthly Newsletter December 2021