North American insurance executives are increasingly seeing the value in strong enterprise-risk-management (ERM) programs, with a growing number of insurers crediting such programs with positively impacting key areas of their business.

In its latest global ERM insurance survey, Towers Watson said North American insurers showed the “most prominent business changes” resulting from their ERM programs compared to the previous survey the firm conducted in 2010.

Asked to rank the areas of business most impacted by their evolving ERM programs, 51 percent of North American insurers answered product pricing, compared to 39 percent in 2010; 48 percent said risk strategy, compared to 38 percent in the earlier survey, and 44 percent said reinsurance strategy, versus 34 percent previously.

“Compared to 2010, insurers are increasingly looking beyond ERM as a means to mitigate downside risk and are seeing the upside value of ERM as a way to enhance risk/return decisions,” says Eric Simpson, Towers Watson's property and casualty ERM practice leader for the Americas. “Going forward, this trend will accelerate as stochastic economic capital modeling becomes more prevalent and accessible among large and small insurers to support risk/reward decision-making.”

However, there is still work to be done from within: while three-fourths of North American organizations say their risk governance and organization structure have made significant progress in the past two years, less than half feel they make enough allowances for risk within their capital and performance-management processes.

To that end, risk culture is seen as the most significant aspect in achieving the participant's vision of the role of ERM within their organization: 82 percent of North American insurers say that it is of high importance, more so than risk monitoring and reporting. Sixty five and sixty three percent of respondents, respectively, say their risk plan will be realized through setting limits and defining appetite.

Given their organization's current state, 45 percent of insurers think that they could squeeze the most value from ERM by investing in risk monitoring; 44 percent say they need to invest in skilled expertise; and 43 percent would choose a good risk-management-information system.

Looking forward, North American insurers emphasized dashboard (data) reporting as their top ERM priority throughout 2013, followed by risk-appetite definition. Lowest on the list was separating and managing individual-market, credit, and operational-risk exposures.

More than sixty percent of respondents say their area of focus will be to establish a common, firm-wide understanding of risk management in the next two years, and about as many say they will integrate risk and capital management into their strategy. About half report that they would like to hand employees more responsibility by preparing them to escalate risk-related concerns to management.

On the other hand, one unpopular strategy is aligning executive incentives with risk returns or including RM metrics in staff-performance evaluations.

Over 539 senior insurance executives across the world participated in the survey. Of that total, 200 were North American respondents from Bermuda, Canada and the U.S. spanning risk, finance and actuarial disciplines across all lines of business, including property & casualty (42 percent), life insurance (26 percent), reinsurance (16 percent), multiline insurers (11 percent) and other (5 percent).

Special Reports /

Survey: North American Insurers Seeing Greater Gains from ERM Programs

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