RM Job Security Risky For Some In Hard Mkt.

Risk managers who took credit for premium savings during the soft market could find their jobs on the line as the market hardens and premiums rise, observers warn.

“I think a significant amount of risk managers will lose their jobs in the next 18 months,” said Paul Buckley, treasury director, risk management, for Lucent Technologies Inc. in Morristown, N.J. “Why? Because they took credit for all those soft market years and the premium reductions they got and guess whos going to get blamed for the hard market?”

Mr. Buckley said that risk managers who took premium savings and didnt prepare their management for the “extremely hard market” might suffer now. He added that risk managers who cancelled and rewrote policies to further take advantage of the soft market now face insurers that are “going to get even with them.”

Mr. Buckley said he has attempted to “keep management well informed” and has managed against “an overall budget. Its more important to manage long-term budget stability than manage the fluctuations in the market.”

However, Bill Perry, a headhunter for risk managers, said that even though taking credit for low premiums is “about the stupidest thing that any risk manager could have done,” he believes their jobs are secure.

“There is a good news, bad news scenario now,” said Mr. Perry, president of Logic Associates Inc. in New York City. “The bad news is that were in a recession and people are going to lose jobs. The good news is that the entire risk management profession could be saved because of the hard market.” He said that firms with “premiums through the ceiling” will most likely want to hang onto their risk managers now.

A risk manager who is “teetering with his boss,” however, may not be helped by the hard market, he said, though overall, firms “are going to need the professionalism of a good risk manager.”

Risk managers who took credit for savings during the soft market may have to “backpedal, but I dont think its a huge issue,” he said. “People are aware its a tough market. In my opinion, the better the risk manager, the less credit he took for the soft market anyway.”

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, November 26, 2001. Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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RM Job Security Risky For Some In Hard Mkt.

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