It's not like the insurance industry needs to go out of its way to search for new risks to obsess over. An industry that was built on helping others avoid risk now spends as much time managing its own risk as it does helping policyholders avoid theirs. But as some carriers have found in recent years, there are plenty of new things happening in the world on which to keep a close eye.

"Enterprise risk management [ERM] at its most basic is us understanding all the risks that we face and being able to manage those risks," says Mark Talerico, chief risk officer for Narragansett Bay Insurance. "On the one hand, you could argue any company that has ever been successful has done exactly that. I don't think it's always been thought about or quantified in one central location, though. We are being forced to think about it and lay it out a little more cleanly."

In the consulting practice at Keane, Alkesh Shah examines enterprise risk in six areas: credit risk, market risk, portfolio risk, audit risk, SOX compliance, and operational risk. "These are the things we are helping our clients with to be in compliance or in better control of," says Shah, who is senior director and client partner in Keane's financial and insurance practice. "I would say a blanket statement is no one is doing a great job [with ERM]; some are doing a good job, and some are doing an OK job."